Church members make Christmas trees out of recyclable items

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WHILE most people would have thrown out items like egg trays, pieces of wood and plastic bottles without much thought, members of the 61-year-old Ampang Chinese Methodist Church in Bandar Baru Ampang saw something else in them and decided to make three grand Christmas trees of their own this year.

It took a lot of hard work of many helpers and five days to built all three of the 3m high trees, two of which were placed just outside the church’s doors.

Strong message: Church carollers holding candles in recycled syringe bodies while singing next to the unique Christmas tree made from egg trays.

Rev Toh Kee Hean said they had built the trees as part of their decorations for a competition organised by the Central District of the Chinese Methodist Church in Malaysia.

“The theme was ‘Joy to the World’ and we got to thinking about the joy of Jesus coming into the world to save us. He will pick up those abandoned by society and this inspired us to use recyclable items to create the trees,” he said.

Even the ornaments were made out of recyclable materials, with some representing an even deeper meaning than just a pretty bauble.

“The decoration for our main tree is little jequirity or rosary pea seeds. The bright red colour reminds us of the blood of Christ while each seed signifies souls or members of the church,” Toh said.

Finishing touches: (From left) Sam Chong, 16, Anurak Runcaryaki, 13 and Lee Suet Lin, 11, adjusting the ribbons on the chipboard tree outside their church.

With the help of the church-goers, it took about a month to collect enough material and brightly coloured seeds from a tree behind the parsonage to make the trees.

When the trees were completed, many in the congregation expressed partiality to the egg tray tree.

“While doing a bit of Internet research on what kind of trees we could build, we came across one made out of egg trays. However, the tree we saw merely had the trays tied in a manner than merely emphasised the tray’s shape,” said helper Benjamin Yap, 19.

A bit of experimentation later saw them coming up with the idea of bending the tray in half diagonally and putting this all over a mesh-wire shaped into a cone.

“This made the tree look like it had branches and leaves. We used 128 trays for our tree. Initially, we hung various baubles on them but it did not look so good so we used jequirity seeds,” he said.

Yap added that the most difficult tree to make was the one of empty plastic bottles.

“Each of the 988 bottles we collected had to be squeezed into the mesh and it was hard work!” he said.

The last tree was made of 212 pieces of chipboard that were leftovers from a furniture factory.

While the centre of attention this year in the church are the trees, the rest of the space has not been neglected and Yap pointed out the garlands that were made from old wreaths.

“Old magazines were cut into Christmas tree shapes and hung with some CDs for that added sparkle. Some members also brought the polystyrene packaging that comes with large electronic items which we cut into small balls of ‘snow’ to hang as well,” he said.

Margaret Chan who is in charge of social concern matters within the church said the project helped push the recycling message among the parish even more.

“We have been doing recycling activities since early this year for the Beautiful Gate Foundation. We encourage church members to bring in items such as old newspapers for them,” she said, adding that she hoped those who see the decorations would be inspired to make their own.