Illuminating Christmas

It's that time of year again when I try to wrap my head around the meaning of a Christmas without all the commercial trimmings and trappings. 

In our quest to have a more sustainable lifestyle, our little family does what we can to cut back on our consumption of single-use plastic. We have gotten into the habit of toting our reusable water bottles on the bus and bringing our reusable grocery bags to the store (including canvas bulk bags and produce bags). Our son Jeremy is great at bringing reusable dishes to take home his leftovers when he eats out. Reduced Waste gets trickier at Christmas time. We no longer buy wrapping paper or gift bags. We started by using what we already had. (There are all kinds of articles on how to creatively wrap gifts without paper.) We already have more Christmas decorations than we can use. We enjoy using real plates, glasses, silverware and even cloth napkins at our family gatherings and backyard carol singing parties.  

I guess the biggest struggle for me was dealing with gift giving. Growing up poor, a big part of our family tradition was opening gifts on Christmas Eve. I would use my birthday money to buy inexpensive presents for my sisters. I loved  playing Santa - getting up in the middle of the night and putting soda flavored lip gloss in the stockings. Buying stuff was a way of expressing love. After years of struggling to find gifts for distant relatives, sending cheap plastic "thinking of you" presents, and collecting a houseful of knickknacks (that I hear are out of style), gift giving has lost much of its appeal to me. 

It's no secret how commercialized Christmas has become. I remember when I was a child my parents trying to put "Christ back in Christmas" by having a birthday cake for Jesus. The whole idea of surprising people with gifts is so profit driven. It encourages people to buy items that the recipient may not want or need. What happens to all those well-meaning, unwanted gifts? We don't have enough closet space for all of ours. Sometimes they get re-gifted, but often they ended up at the thrift store. Some of the toys got broken and end up in the trash. The landfill is full of broken toys. In Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, there is the Island of Misfit Toys. Santa finally gets them to children who will love them. Yep, buying presents has been ingrained in us since we were old enough to watch an animated Rankin/Bass Christmas special. How could we be happy at Christmas without that special gift? 

Now that our Christmas Eve celebrations no longer center around opening gifts, we have had to find new traditions like having family game night or bringing back old traditions like our Christmas Sing-a-long party. I've discovered that what I really care about is being with friends and family. The last few years, we weren't able to get together due to COVID, so we got creative and had a Christmas talent show on Zoom. My sister and I made a real effort to share our lives by calling more often - and sometimes including the whole family on conference calls. That effort has really paid off with a closer relationship. This year we were blessed with visits from both sides of the family. Since we didn't have to do Christmas shopping, we had more time to spend together! The highlight was hiking in our beautiful desert.  I hope that becomes a holiday tradition.

All those family activities inspired another tradition... sending Christmas Newsletters via email. No paper waste! It's fun and much more personal than paper cards. 

Wishing you and yours a joyous holiday season! 

If you need something to do with your old cards...

https://www.sustainablelivingtucson.com/2016/12/making-holiday-gift-boxes-from-reused.html

More thoughts on sustainable holidays: 

Recreating Christmas Traditions: Harking Back to Simpler Times

Celebrating new traditions that represent our values

Celebrating new traditions that represent our values

 

A few years ago, I joined the Zero Waste Tucson community on Facebook. I've learned so much from the group about how to enhance our lifestyle by reducing the use of single-use plastic by practicing the 5 R's of Sustainability: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot (compost). The holiday today got me thinking about a particular post... A member was fretting over how to tell her mother not to buy more plastic toys for her children. She knew it was a sensitive subject since that was one way her mother expressed her love for her grandchildren.  But her whole house was already full of plastic toys that the children only played with once. I imagine she didn't want her children to equate love with material possessions. Perhaps more important was her need for her mother to respect her shift in values - away from a consumer lifestyle. 

Since we transitioned to a reduced-waste lifestyle, we have become more conscious of our own wasteful consumer traditions during the holidays. We have found ways to celebrate the holidays that don't involve food waste, disposable plates, and wrapping paper. But gift giving was another matter. It was actually difficult for me when my grown kids no longer wanted to participate in a Christmas centered around gift giving - that was our family tradition. 

I still feel nostalgic when I hear Christmas music piped over the store intercoms in November (sometimes October!) It brings me back to happy times of exchanging gifts around the Christmas tree. But if I'm honest, there were more moments of disappointment, jealously, and stress. It was actually a relief when I didn't have worry about Christmas shopping anymore. I finally came to realize, at the ripe age of  53, what I really wanted was family time and tradition.

As I hear neighbors setting off fireworks every 4th of July, I feel conflicted. I don't want to scare the neighborhood dogs or risk a fire by following that tradition. While I still pine for those family get togethers, I realize that my values have changed. I no longer want to participate in another consumer holiday. During these challenging times, it's become important to me to build family traditions that fit with our new values. 

We're blessed to enjoy a rich sustainable lifestyle. That's worth celebrating! We've created some little traditions to do just that. I'd like to share some with you. 

Celebrate nopales season by picking pads and preparing a prickly pair brunch with a nopales scramble and prickly pear fruit lemonade or margarita. 

Celebrate purslane season by picking some purslane, rinsing it off over a bowl and pouring the little black seeds under a plant that's already being watered.  Then make your family's favorite purslane recipe. 

Celebrate mesquite season by gleaning pods before the first rain and eating mesquite pancakes or cookies.

Celebrate the start of Monsoon Season!  Rush out and watch how the rain is sinking into the catchment basins.  #lovemyrainbasin Take lots of pics!  Dance in the rain! Warm up with a hot bowl of soup made with food scrap broth. Sit on the porch and watch the storm roll in, toasting it with loved ones. 

Celebrate the moringa tree growing back after the monsoon by hanging branches out to dry into tea or making moringa soup with the green leaves and pods. 

Celebrate the summer harvest by picking tomatoes and basil grown in homemade compost with rainwater from the cistern by serving tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella on homemade bread. 

Funny how many of these traditions revolve around food. Some things never change!  

We've found these traditions all the more rewarding because they celebrate the fruits of our labor.  Here's to hoping you come up with some meaningful traditions of your own! Cheers! 

MORE IDEAS:

Greening the Holidays: How to Celebrate Sustainably

Sonoran Desert Foraging: What to Forage in Summer

Sustainable Tucson's holiday party: "Celebrate Our Sustainable Future."

You are invited to Sustainable Tucson's holiday party.

Tuesday, December. 11, 6-8:30 p.m. (Doors open at 5:30 p.m.)

St Mark's Presbyterian Church, 3809 E 3rd St. Geneva Room
(Parking on 3rd St. and 2nd St. 2nd St. lot is closer to the Geneva Rm.)

Share the bounty of the season at our holiday potluck. Non-alcoholic drinks provided by Sustainable Tucson. Save a dinosaur; bring your own flatware and glasses.

REASON TO CELEBRATE 

If you read the recent IPCC study on climate change, you might not think there is much to celebrate this holiday season. The idea that climate change is progressing faster than first predicted can be quite a jolt, even if you’re already working to fight it. But it could also be an opportunity to come together as a community to envision and create a better, more sustainable and resilient Tucson!

At this year's holiday party, Sustainable Tucson will be celebrating the possibilities by creating a festival atmosphere with street fair activities:

Design Your Dream Neighborhood: Create a walk-able, inviting neighborhood from a typical Tucson neighborhood map using blocks that represent elements of complete streets. (Model built by Changemaker High School students.)

Creating Our Future: Draw the ways we can create a sustainable future for Tucson by 2038 on panels we will join together into a paper quilt.

Community Tree: Add leaves with your ideas about what we can do as a community to make Tucson Sustainable by 2038.

Time Capsule: Place your note to the future in our time capsule to be opened in a year: What are your hopes for Tucson or what will you make happen in Tucson in the coming year?

"Tales of Future" storytelling stage: Local Comedian Jeremy Segal will host impromptu stories about pursuing your vision for a sustainable future and other fun environmental stories.

Come celebrate with us!