I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

We don’t seem to have very many snowy white Christmas’ in my neck of the woods these days.  Global warming’s impact can be felt far and wide.  The unusually balmy December weather cannot be ignored and it has me thinking more and more of a green Christmas this year.

It all started the day after Halloween on a visit to the grocery store.  I strolled through the aisles collecting my groceries, when all of the sudden I heard them.....the jing-jing-jingle bells of holiday Muzak.  NOOOOO!  It’s too early.  The Halloween candy is still on the shelves.   At that moment I felt a sudden dread in my heart.  For the first time in my life, I was dreading the holidays.  With everything from gas to milk skyrocketing over the last few years and our wages staying stagnant, the turkey isn’t going to be the only lean part of our holiday this season.

Shortly after that visit to the market, I received a call from my sister.   She wanted to express her own concern about the upcoming holidays.  Because 2007 has effectively become known as the "Year of the Tainted Toys", she wanted to discuss shopping changes for the kids this year.  She had just finished purging the house by rounding up all the cheap, plastic, and abandoned toys (many which take batteries) scattered throughout the home.  All told, she accumulated 2 full yard sized trash bags worth of "goods."  And she was disgusted.  It was clear we were both on the same page.  Enough was enough.  The commercialization aspect of Christmas has crested in our family.  We began to talk about ways we might simplify and we thought back to our own childhood Christmas’.  And that’s when it hit me ---- everything I wanted to know about how to tighten the belt and have an environmentally friendly Christmas was right there in front of me.  The best way for our family to move forward, was to go back.

We always thought our grandmother was a little kooky.  Having lived through The Great Depression as a child, she and my grandfather never relinquished their frugal ways.  I can even remember helping my grandma clean clothes in a washtub in the basement.  I was fascinated with the ringer and eager to help.  That was in the late 70’s or early 80’s, long after washers and dryers were commonplace.  During the holidays, we would all roll our eyes as grandma ran around collecting all of the wrapping paper, bows, and ribbon.  She would later re-use every scrap.  Grandpa would sit by the fireplace with a "log roller" and feed newspaper into it to be re-used as fire starting logs.  We would decorate the tree, not with contrived, expensive, plastic, imported, store bought ornaments, but with gingerbread men, Christmas trees, snowmen and more.  All handmade from felt, Elmer’s glue, and whatever else we could find.  Of course, the tree was complimented with strands of popcorn and construction paper chains that we tirelessly strung ourselves.  And much of the food on the table came from the jars of fresh vegetables in the basement, remnants of their enormous summer garden.  Leftover scraps were held aside for the compost bin.

Some of the gifts were handmade too.  I recall my favorite gift from the grandparents were the matching handmade sleeping bags that all the grandkids received one year.  It wasn’t so much the bag, but knowing that we would be using those sleeping bags on a camping trip with grandma and grandpa.  For many years, they took each grandchild separately for several days on a camping trip.  We loved those trips.  Catching fish with grandpa and cooking it over a fire.  Walking along the shores of a creek or small river with grandma, searching for fresh watercress for our salads.  I can’t even remember what else I got for Christmas in those years (except for that Grease album.) But, I remember that handmade sleeping bag and the promise of adventure.  And if I close my eyes, I can almost smell that homemade pie in the oven.  I can see grandma scampering around the homemade ornament covered tree, collecting all that paper to make sure that none of it went to waste.  What a warm feeling I get from these memories now.

Were my grandparents environmentalists ahead of their time?  Maybe.  But, I think it has more to do with us going astray as a whole.  Somehow we lost our collective heads in the commercial madness.  It’s now up to us to fix it.

So, this year my family is moving forward by going back.  Getting back to the basics and teaching the next generation all of the wonderful things our grandparents taught us.  Showing them that new is not always better and that a gift doesn't have to be wrapped in impenetrable plastic to have real, lasting value.

Much to my own surprise, it turns out that I’ve been dreaming of a green Christmas all along.

As a postscript, I offer this final thought:  On the off-chance that Santa does read this love letter to holidays gone by, grandma would certainly agree with me that a Nintendo Wii is the exception to the rule and certainly falls in the category of personal enrichment.