Are you a lichenophile who wants to enjoy your love of lichens at this festive time of year? Would you like ideas to help foist lichens on your unsuspecting family? Here are 6 ideas.

1. Watch a lichen steal the show

Lichens can be seen in a wide variety of movies as extras in the background, but in a few movies they really shine. Those movies are sometimes Christmas movies, because where there is a Christmas movie, there are often reindeer, and where there are reindeer, there are sometimes lichens. Perhaps the best lichen movie of the past decade is Klaus, a delightful animated movie that offers up an origin story for Santa Claus and his reindeer. It takes a while to get to it, but there’s a pivotal scene starring what appears to be Cladonia rangerifera. (I mean, sure, its color is more like the color it is when you find it dyed at a craft store, but it’s still pretty great). After Klaus, watch Frozen 2, which isn’t a Christmas movie, but there are plenty of reindeer and lots of beautiful lichen scenery in the background, where the clads appear to actually be the right color.

2. Make a lichen wreath

If you’re like me and the sight of an elegant lichen brings more holiday joy to your heart, you might consider decorating with lichens. Ethical collecting guidelines usually recommend harvesting lichens that are abundant and come from windfall, but fall and winter storms can bring an abundance. Here in California, there are places where branches covered in Evernia and Ramalina and Flavoparmelia and other common lichens abound. You can add larger lichens to your Christmas tree, place them on random shelves around your house (though let’s be honest, many of us just have that decor up all the time), or make a wreath. I made the wreath pictured below to wear at my wedding, but now it lives year round on my front door and would make a nice holiday wreath, too. To make it, I bought a grapevine wreath to use as a base (if you have grapevines you can make your own base), then used a glue gun to add the lichens.

3. Make it a lichen vacation

Maybe you want to take a trip this holiday season–I offer up the following suggested destinations. Might I suggest a pilgrimmage to see the Christmas lichen? The red-and-green Cryptothecia rubrocincta, or Christmas lichen, lives in the southeastern U.S., as well as in Central and South America. Christmas in Florida with Christmas lichens? Sign me up!

4. Take a family lichen walk

Want to get some exercise after loafing around feasting and opening gifts? Why not get your family to join you on a nice little walk, around your neighborhood or a local park, where then–surprise!–you tell them all about the lichens you see along the route! Festive and educational! Whether your family listens to you at all is pretty hit or miss, but hey, worth a shot and you’ll have fun. In the winter in many locations, lichens can really shine, without all those distracting flowers or fall foliage. In the wet season, lichens are at their brightest, and even in snowy locations they can stand out amid the snow.

5. Make a festive lichen dessert

The Yule Log, or Buche-de-Noel, is a traditional Christmas cake decorated to look like a log, often with forestry accoutrements. My mom used to make one every year for a while, complete with meringue mushrooms, and for the past few years I’ve brought the tradition back, with a lichen twist. Meringue mushrooms are usually made by using a piping bag (you can use a ziploc, too) to make mushroom caps and stems, baking them at a low temperature, and then glueing them together with chocolate ganache.

I’ve adapted this basic recipe to make a variety of lichens instead. I use a small amount of green food coloring to make my meringue pale green. Then, to make Cladonias, I make lots of little small dots (cups for apothecia) on my parchment paper, as well as skinny lines to serve as stems (podetia). When they are baked and hardened, I glue them together with the ganache, with the flat side of the dots up. Usually I have to carefully trim the stems with a paring knife to get a flat surface. The stems break easily, so I make extras of those, but even a broken stem will usually work quite nicely–it just needs to be long enough to elevate the apothecia above the surface of the Yule log. Once they are done and the ganache has hardened, I arrange them on the top and sides of the cake in clusters (if you use chocolate ganache as the cake frosting, they will stick well). You can get creative and make shapes that look like foliose lichens, too, or use red food coloring to make a “British soldiers” style Cladonia.

6. Gift (or just wear) lichen-dyed knits