Part 2 first. Maybe put up no xmas lights at all, if you always have put at least some up. Just this one year, this once, don’t put them up. See if you can summon up whatever it takes just this one time, and instead maybe explore more environmental ways to celebrate and rejoice together.
NASA scientist near the3 end briefly asks “what the norms” that drive people’s energy-consumption behaviors. Some videos similar to this celebrate how much light the earth sends out around us as if there’s something intrinsically good about it. Especially at Christmas. ...but, really, is that true?
Reasons people cite for putting up lights even if they’re progressive and environmentalistic...
and/or for doing xmas-light tourism —which increases social pressure and reward for xmas-light displays & competitons— despite the global cost in added environmental pollution:
- I’m just one person, what I do one day or one month a year doesn’t make any difference in the big picture for the better or the worse. (Aside from voting, of course — what each individual does about voting always matters.)
- Seasonal affective disorder can’t be treated effectively any other way from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.
- If the north American grid can take the strain, it must be OK and doing no harm to anyone or anything.
- I can afford the electricity bill. Let people who can’t afford it cut back on their usage; it’ll help their bottom line. Plus the environmental extremists — let them go dark — they’re just masochists anyway.
- My family, friends and neighbors will call me a grouch, a grinch, a humbug, a spoilsport, an atheist, an agnostic, or a crappy Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist or Jew if I don’t go along to get along with them. They’ll be pissed at me. I can’t handle that.
- All the little ones will be so awww disappointed (even the newborns who never even saw it before and won’t know wtf it is now) especially my grandkids, nieces, nephews, children, students. I need their love and admiration too much to not keep inculcating them with light pollution. Even if they recognize at some level that this contradicts everything we try to teach them they themselves should do to save the planet.
- We have to teach one another tolerance and respect for our various cultures, so my putting up lights teaches other people to tolerate and respect mine.
- It’s traditional. (Like FGM is traditional, like white people having more privilege than everyone else is traditional, etc etc)
- This is just a temporary exception to being environmentalist. Everyone’s entitled to a few exceptions, right? It’s like income tax laws. The rich are entitled to their tax breaks, so we’re entitled to this.
- I would miss it too much — I love it, I enjoy it, my holiday pleasure is so important to me, this most of all, and I can’t think of any less environmentally costly way to be happy at The Holidays — and I just can’t take the pain of doing without.
- I have to set a good example of holiday cheer and the spirit of love, and there’s no better way to do it than by lighting up the night.
- My parents and grandparents GAVE me these lights and decorations. It would be ungrateful, disrespectful, and unloving of me, especially toward the ones who are no longer here to celebrate with us.
- Candles are dangerous. Look at all the housefires from when people put candles around.
- Some occasional circadian rhythm disruption is good for depression, and too many people get depressed that they don’t have the money or the family to really enjoy the holidays. (See also #2 above)
- I have LED lights. They’re very cheap to use and easy to put up. Altho’ I’m not sure where they’re manufactured, or how much environmental pollution the manufacturing causes. (See also #1 above.)
- I’m already doing more than my fair share for the environment. The fact that I could do more is beside the point.
- I have solar panels so I’m sparing the grid in the daytime besides saving myself some dough. Not my fault the panels don’t output much power at night. I don’t think my inabality to afford a power-storage/battery component should determine whether I can have lights or not.
- Nobody has any right to tell me what to do. Nobody can tell me what’s better to do than what I choose to do. It’s a free country. My personal choices are inviolate. If you want me to not put up xmas lights, you’ll have to pry them from my cold dead hands.
- Why expect me to cut back at all? Go look at my neighbors, they’re the real polluters and anti-environmentalists!
- I don’t hafta so I’m not gonna. <big>👅</big> If you hadn’t said anything, maybe I mighta. But you stuck your nose in. So it’s your fault.
- It’s the job of government and big business to cut down on grid strain and industrial pollution involved with electricity generation, go bug them, not me.
- Why does it always have to be me who sets the good example?
- I have ABSOLUTELY no clue how to do the holidays without lights and it’s just too much of a strain on my imagination to try to come up with anything else.<big>
- It’s too scarey/weird to even try to go without lights even for just one year, even right after the COP26 Climate Change Summt in Glasgow. I Just don’t have the guts to try to do without. I don’t have what it takes, even to prove to myself that I could if I wanted to.</big>
- _______________________________________ (fill in the blank).
<big><big>Part 3</big> (not mentioned in the diary title: no room): “Don’t waste good.” </big>🌲Not gift wrapping, or trees, or other things that overload the sanitation districts and their workers and the added garbage trucks polluting the streets. 🌲 Not income in going over the top and into debt on the annual orgy of decorations, parties, and gift-giving. There are people hungry and homeless and ill in our own towns who desperately need our financial help. If this is a season of love, let things like donation certificates we make in one another’s name be alternative ways to spend. 🌲 Not food, even if the supply seems endless at this time of year. The supply chain is seriously damaged. What’s wasted now can add to shortages and suffering later, even if it’s not us suffering… altho’ it might be... 🌲 Not time and effort: maybe instead pay more personal attention to those we love, and those who need us, rather than burning up our energies in habitual ways that do no lasting good.🌲
<big><big>Part 1.</big>Don’t kill trees; grow and share them.</big> ✔️ Find the businesses that grow Christmas trees in your area and tell them TODAY that you don’t want to kill trees for Christmas, that they shouldn’t grow any that are only good for that. Tell them you want trees that can be planted — by you, where you live, or in parks and at schools that need more greenspace and shade to cool their micro-environment, or for reforestation projects where trees have burned down, or died of pests, or where floods have carried trees away. Ask about “subscribing” for later tree-planting in place of buying trees to kill for the holidays. ✔️ Ask your local government and tree organizations and the National Arbor Day Foundation etc how they can work with tree growers to delay distribution and sales until the season where you are is good for planting. Ask about “subscribing” for later tree-planting. ✔️Put a small, live tree in your living room, and nurture it until it can be planted. See if you can bring small, easy-care live green plants to nursing homes and assisted living residences and womens’ shelters and homeless shelters. ✔️ See if your area’s safety-net services has a project for supplying green-colored tents and other necessities to the homeless in your town — let a visual forest of better safety spring up for them to have and us to see. ✔️ Bring life.
Commenters please share more ideas for holiday environmentalism. Changing our American ways isn’t easy, but we are the nation and the individuals who burn up the world the most. That means not only that we should do the most to fix that, but that we actually have the most options and possibilities to change things, especially compared to struggling people everywhere. We need all the ideas we can get, and give.
Fair disclosure: Christmas is not a holiday in my heritage, so any changes I make will be easy and no big accomplishment. For anyone to whom a conventional Christmas is important, though, every change to be more earth-friendly, to find less polluting ways of celebrating and connecting with the season and with one another will not be easy. That’s what makes it a HUGE achievement.
Ir may be that wiccans might have some ideas for us, too. If they see this diary, I hope they’ll comment.
Thank you for reading.