by Barbara Allen

For generations we have, as a culture and as individual families, woven tapestries of traditions around the Christmas holiday. Some of us are looking at the pattern we have created of late and seeing that although the overall design is beautiful there are a few serious flaws in the weave. Robyn Griggs Lawrence says in an article in the Natural Home Magazine “Last year, according to the American Express Retail Index, the average consumer expected to spend $1,161 on holiday gifts–with credit cards, an average payoff time of four months. But the Center for a New American Dream found that 70 percent of Americans would welcome less emphasis on gift giving and spending, and 82 percent would rather receive a photo album full of fond memories than a store-bought gift. Seventy-six percent of those polled said that excessive advertising and marketing to kids is taking the joy and meaning out of the holiday season--but even so, a third of the parents surveyed said they were working more hours to earn extra money for holiday spending.”

Bill McKibben, wrote a book called “Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas” (Simon & Schuster, 1988) because he feels something has gone wrong with the way we approach Christmas. “We’ve gotten used to spending more money to make Christmas special,” he writes. “But if money’s no longer as valuable as time, we’re offering each other a devalued currency.” He isn’t suggesting that we stop giving to one another, but that we give things that really matter: time and attention are two he mentions. “We run short on these things in our lives, even as we have an endless supply of software, hardware, ready-to-wear,” he writes.

The gift-expense issue runs much deeper than just a couple of excessive weeks in December, McKibben points out. It’s a symptom of our collectively lost souls. “The reason to change Christmas–the reason it might be useful to change Christmas–is because it might help us to get at some of the underlying discontent in our lives,’’ he says. “Because it might help us see how to change every other day of the year, in ways that really would make our whole lives, and maybe our entire 365-days-a-year culture, healthier in the long run.”

Living a life that truly honors the things that matter to us, like the earth and the rest of humanity on the planet, can make us feel whole in a way that we might find surprising.

Most of us really do care about the earth and all its natural wonders, and are saddened by the things we see happening even in our small corner of it. Perhaps we can start this year to build new traditions into our holidays that respect these feelings, that honor our values. If nothing else the crisis we are living through has helped us to get a clearer sense of what’s truly important in our lives. Let’s make our holidays reflect that.

Some of the following ideas are from “42 Ways to Trim Your Holiday Wasteline” from the Partners for Environmental Progress and The ULS Report” as well as Robyn Lawrence’s article.

Give a gift of love

Giving experiences you can share, rather than material goods, saves resources, and can deepen and enrich your friendships. You can also simply give a gift of yourself. The key to giving a gift of yourself is to know the wants and needs of the person to whom you are giving the gift. It is also important not to underestimate your own special skills and talents. One valuable aspect of giving a gift of yourself is that it is the perfect solution for those who "have everything."

· Make an audio or video family tree. Using a tape recorder or a video camera, interview elderly relatives about their childhood, courtships, and other precious memories.

· Fill a calendar with reminders of special family holidays, personal messages, and memories.

· Write a letter listing ten things you love about the recipient.

· Collect family recipes and give them in a wooden recipe box

· Offer a monthly lunch date with an elderly relative or friend

· Weed a friend's garden

· Offer your talents, such as photography, financial planning, or hairstyling

· Offer yourself as a willing, cheerful worker for a day

· Put together a photo album that traces the family as back many generations as you are able. Following a time-line, place photos together on pages and make photo copies (color copiers do an excellent job on color photos) of the groupings. Put together an album for each member of the family with several special pages of pictures of them from birth to the present.

· Make a video of some of the people the gift recipient loves.

· Offer to do a chore for a month that a family member dislikes

Give a Gift for the Earth

Giving a membership to a nonprofit organization that does hands-on work to protect a part of the Earth's ecosystem is giving a gift that gives a gift. Not only do you enrich the life of the person to whom you give the gift, but you also help organizations that are trying to make a difference.

Buy products that don't hurt the planet; such as: products with very little packaging, food and beauty product made from all natural ingredients, and goods produced locally by small businesses and artisans.

· Make a holiday meal with as many locally-grown and/or organic foods as possible.

· Buy a live Christmas tree and replant it.

Give a Gift that’s for the Birds!

One of the best ways of affirming the environment at Christmas is to care for the birds. One of our family’s greatest delights is watching cardinals, titmice, and woodpeckers come to our feeder outside the kitchen. If you don’t have a bird book, get one for the whole family.

· Give a bird feeder that attaches to the window or window sill for close-up viewing. This can be an especially nice gift for the elderly. Make sure its placed within view of their favorite chair and easy to refill.

· Give seeds for a bird garden. Mexican and Russian sunflowers are beautiful additions to a garden and if left to go to seed will supply birds with seed during the winter. Or when the seeds are well formed and ripe you can cut the flowers with long stems and store them somewhere dry. Then hang them out for the birds, one flower at a time, all winter long. The flowers of pineapple sage, salvias and pentas are enjoyed by butterflies as well as hummingbirds. If you have no garden space, any of these can be grown in a large pot on a deck or patio.

· Give a tree or shrub, especially native ones that will feed birds and other wildlife.

Kid Stuff

· Make a gingerbread house and decorate it. One of our most pleasant Christmas memories is of the whole family sitting around creating a gingerbread house and landscape. Take pictures of the whole process.

· When buying electronic toys and other portable items that are used regularly, remember to buy rechargeable batteries to go with them and a battery charger.

· Gather old clothing from attics, closets, and flea markets and give to a child for dress-up.

· Tools and gadgets make a great idea box for a young inventor. Many of these could come from flea markets and garage sales – including the tool box possibly freshly painted with the owners name painted on the side.

· A box filled with crayons, watercolors, brushes, scissors, glue, different papers, bits of cloth, Popsicle sticks, non-hardening clay, drawing pencils, ribbon and string and other odds and ends can give a child many opportunities to express themselves creatively.

Odds and Ends…

· Plan your shopping in advance. Consolidating your shopping trips saves fuel (and aggravation).

· Rather than piling up "stuff" under the tree, think about what friends and family really want or need.

· Give gifts that encourage others to use less stuff, like a book about making crafts from reusable items, a cookbook for leftovers or reusable tote bags.

· Shop for gifts at antique stores, estate and yard sales or flea markets.

· Donate unwanted gifts, along with last year’s gifts that the kids have outgrown, to charity.

· Environmentally friendly gifts include home composting bins, flower bulbs, seeds, mulching lawn mowers, a bicycle, or compact low energy fluorescent light bulbs.

· For each compact fluorescent bulb you substitute for an incandescent bulb in your home, you can afford to light a string of 100 mini-lights and still save energy, money, and the environment.

Resources

Many of these ideas are from the Center for a New American Dream’s website, www.newdream.org

Low-tech gift ideas and other ways to reduce holiday spending. www.SimplifyTheHolidays.org

Find out whether the gifts you’re considering exploit people, animals, or the environment at: www.ResponsibleShopper.org
 

“Snippets”

This is a wonderful time to plant native wildflowers. Most of the fall bloomers have gone to seed now and you can collect the seed and plant it in flower beds and wild areas on your property. Just loosen the surface soil in a sunny spot and scatter the seed and cover lightly. The native coreopsis or tickseed, the dainty black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), the local orange butterfly weed (Ascepias), goldenrod (Solidago) and the lovely lavender spikes of blazing star (Liatris) are all worthy of any garden setting or natural space in your yard. The best part is that they will take care of themselves once they are established. They BELONG in this corner of the world and like it here! They don’t need humans to baby them or do anything for them at all except to give them space to grow and enjoy their beauty. You will be joined in that pleasure by many butterflies and birds. We are very fortunate in this part of the country to have so many wonderful native wildflowers. They are sold and planted in gardens around the world.

For more information on planting wildflowers contact Dara Dobson, District 1 Wildflower chairman, FFGC, 859-0096, sevpines7@aol.com

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This column comes to you courtesy of the Environmental Concerns Group of the DeFuniak Springs Garden Club.