Arts & Crap: Holiday Beardos

Ah, Christmas! A time to give, a time to love, a time to kill, and most importantly, a time to celebrate hoary old, rosy-cheeked bearded men. If you live in the world, you know that Santa is the beardo we casual Christians honor most during the holiday season and our veneration of Old Saint Nick extends to our December craft projects. When I was in elementary school, my teachers forced my classmates and I to churn out hundreds of paper plate Santas, hang said paper plates upon the walls, and then prostrate ourselves before them. "O night divine, O night when Santa was born," we would sing. 


To make your very own paper plate Santa Claus you will need:
Construction Paper (red, pink, white)
Cotton Balls
Paper Plate
Crayolas
Black Marker
Scissors, Glue, etc.


Instructions (which I basically just got from this site):
1. To make Santa's head, turn the paper plate face down (trim down the edges of the plate if you're inspired to do so) and color the paper plate peach as conventional wisdom/the media/the National Association for the Advancement of Peach People (NAAPP) tells us that this is the color of flesh.


2. Fabricate a little cone-shaped Santa hat with your red construction paper. Glue a cotton ball to the tip of the hat, so that the hat looks gangsta, and a white strip of construction paper to the base--this will be the brim of the hat. Glue the hat to the peach face.


3. Glue cotton balls around the edges of the paper plate peach face. Make sure to do this with care because this will be Santa's beard and you want him to look as sexy as possible. 


4. Draw Santa's face with your black marker. You can cut out some pink construction paper circles and glue them onto his cheeks to convey how drunk he is/the severity of his rosacea.

After completing this Santa (and sucking my glue-covered fingers clean), I got to thinking about some of the other beardy men I admire/respect/wish would come down my chimney every year, and realized that with a few minor adjustments I could honor all of them this holiday season via paper plate craft project.

Karl Marx

Charles Darwin

Papa Smurf

Willie Nelson

Morgan Freeman

The really cool thing about these paper plate faces is that you can punch two little holes into the sides, attach a piece of string/rubber band, and turn them into masks. This way you can attend your holiday functions as Karl Marx, Morgan Freeman, etc.