Early every year, I watch for the shops that are having clearance sales on Christmas decorations.  In particular I’m interested in Christmas tree decorations that are, or could become, slightly collectable … or at the very least family “treasure” in decades ahead.

What started me doing this was memories of some of the antique Christmas tree baubles that my grandmother used to have on her tree.  These were the genuine article – fine glass, hand-blown Victorian baubles in a variety of shapes, and all with hand-painted snowy Dickensian Christmas scenes on them.

Even at the tender age of a pre-teen, I knew these were special … and that was in the days before personal computers had even been conceived, let alone the explosion in collector activity that surrounded the introduction of auction sites on the Internet.  I was as heart-broken as my grandmother any time one of them got broken.  They were stunning, and today would be worth some considerable money – they were her grandmother’s before her.

With the proliferation of plastic mass produced decorations, it gets more and more difficult to find something unique, and I usually succumb to buying box-loads of cute but far from unique items.  In the back of my mind is the thought that the very fact they are cheap and mass produced, one day they will become scarce as most folk discard them with the needleless Christmas Tree that was guaranteed not to shed its greenery before twelfth night.  It’s a bit like the hoarding of first editions of anything – one day they might be worth something.

The pragmatist in me also has a very practical reason for amassing the further-discounted Christmas decoration overstocks in the New Year sales – charity.  No, not to the shopkeepers, but to a particularly vulnerable group of people – children.

I’m not going to trot out a series of heart-rending tales or shock your sensibilities with tragic photographs, I’ll leave that for the Hollywood and music superstars to do with their annual appeals on TV.  Suffice it to say that there’s an orphanage that I’ve donated to each Christmas, quietly and personally, without fuss or fanfare.  I like to try to bolster my donation by selling a few extra things online each pre-Christmas season, and the Christmas tree decorations I snaffle early each year are part of those ranges sold specifically to raise money for this.

Thus we come to the point of this post.

I’ve just added the first batches of this year’s offerings to the online store here at GazLanNaThai.com – I know I’m a little late and missed America’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday buying frenzies – sorry, I was a little distracted by some nonsense caused to me by the world’s largest online auction website (yeah, them, making trouble, again!).

Please have a nosy at what’s on offer in the GazLanNaThai.com online store and buy a Santa to help me help the children this Christmas.

Watch out also for the handmade tree decorations that the older children make as part of their own Christmas fund-raising efforts, I still have a good selection left over from the ones I bought off them last year, although not many of each.

I use the money raised from selling those, to buy more from them each year, which encourages them to be as self-reliant as possible.

Gaz