Can you believe that Christmas is this coming Saturday, and that there's only 2 weeks left to this year? I can't believe it myself. The Great Bento Ideas series highlighting bentos from around the online bento community is back this week after a short hiatus, to showcase some Christmas themed bentos. I've chosen ones that use simple and easy to emulate techniques to come up with great results.

First up is this snowman onigiri bento by Susan Yuen.

What's great about the cute snowmen onigiri in this bento box is that they are really simple yet imaginatively made. The onigiri are round, with little shiny red picks for the noses and hat-shaped picks on the heads. The faces don't look too hard to cut out of nori seaweed either. Susan describes this snowman on her blog, which also includes a great review of the Just Bento Cookbook ^_^. She used a recipe in the book for the chicken karaage! Don't forget to check out her two books, Hawai'i's Bento Box Cookbook: Fun Lunches for Kids and Hawai'i's Bento Box Cookbook: 2nd Course for more great and easy to execute charaben ideas like this one.

Here's a great, simple Christmas bento by SonomaBento. It has an edamame Christmas tree topped by a cheese star, and two decoratively cut radish stars. Read about it on her blog.

Another simple yet effective Christmas tree, this time made from colorful furikake! This bento is by Karina (Bunches and Bits).

Putting a bit of decoration on top of rice is all it takes to really brighten up a bento. This time it's a string of Christmas lights made of simple vegetable cutouts, by Mama Tong. Read about it on her blog.

Santa Claus is, of course, a popular motif for Christmas bentos. Making a face might seem like a duanting task, but the following bentos show that it can be done quite simply too. This Santa is just a bun with a cheese slice beard, a red apple hat, and a piece of wax paper that serves both as a hat trim and a separator between the bun and the apple. It's by Tiffany of Cute Food For Kids - read about it on her blog.

The Santa in this bento by Natakiya is even simpler, yet still really effective. A square ravioli with wavy edges forms the base and also serves as Santa's beard. A slice of sauce is the face, a square red pepper (?) is the hat, and more cheese bits form the hat band and whiskers. The bright green broccoli makes a nice contrast and looks quite festive in this context.

To wrap this up, here is one final festive bento. It's not Christmas themed, and it's certainly not easy, but it's so striking that I had to feature it here. And hey, it covers two other major world religions! This amazing India themed tour de force is by NoveiMC. Wow.

More Great Bento Ideas next time! Why not get inspired by these and other holiday themed bentos in the Just Bento Flickr pool and make your own? Happy Holidays everyone!

(If you want your idea to catch my eye by the way, the best way is to join the Just Bento or Just Bento Bento Gear groups on Flickr and post them there. Don’t forget to post a link to your blog in the description if you have one.)