We used a glue gun to fasten wooden ice-cream sticks together, and pasted bright crêpe paper over them to form our stars. Cutting the paper to fit the various segments of the three-dimensional star was time-consuming, but it was time well-spent chatting at the kitchen table as we beavered away. And it felt liberating to unleash our creativity – while our parols started out identical with their wooden frames, they diverged into a star with mini pompoms and streamer tails, and another adorned with cotton wool balls and potpourri-like stick-ons.