I recently went into a CVS and saw the worst Christmas Decorations I have ever seen. To most, they might seem cute and festive, to me they scream tacky and cheap. To me, they were single use items that would be used once a year, put in a box and thrown away the next year when even cuter crap is sold in massive quantities. I don't blame you if you stop reading here, I don't want to bring your holiday cheer down. But hear me out if you have the patience, I wont totally bag on the Holidays. I will admit, I do participate in gift exchanges, big parties and cookie making and all that fun stuff. I just want to share some thoughts to make you think about how you participate. How you can still get the same warm and fuzzys with out total waste and destruction.
Let start with Black Friday, shall we? My only comment here is, really? People get trampled to death (literally) on this day, wtf? The Holidays are mainly about family right? So, why is it ok to leave your family after a nice Thanksgiving dinner to wait in line at the mall? Gross. I have some friends who work in retail, and it is the worst day of their lives. People turn into animals, just so they can buy a bunch of crap for cheaper than normal. So my friends have to work at 12 midnight on Thanksgiving and stay the entire night to field a massive consumer feeding frenzy. Give it a rest people, do you think your family or friends would rather have you stick around after dinner or go buy them crap? Crap that they most likely already have? If you're shopping on black Friday, you are ruining a holiday for the people who have to ring you up. Think about this, and just don't go. Global warming and climate change will also thank you for not driving all over hell to get to the mall and find a parking lot. How many people carpool to Black Friday? HAHAHAHAHAHA! What a joke right? Carpool to Black Friday, sheesh!
Ok, so say you went to Black Friday and spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on stuff. Now you have to wrap it right? You're probably going to go buy some wrapping paper (made of and wrapped in plastic), some bows (again made of plastic) and some to and from cards, right? Some of you might say, "well I save all my old wrapping paper and ribbons to use again". Fair enough, we did that too. We crammed all our wrapping paper and bows in paper bags to use later. That paper bag gets shoved in a closet some where, all that paper gets wrinkled and taped together. When you pull it back out to use, its such a tangled mess you don't even want to use it anymore and it gets thrown away. Does this sound familiar? If you have a better system that's great. When that paper is passed to the next person where does it end up?
You know all those paper bags you have stashed under your sink from when you forget your bags at the grocery store? No shame in that, I know I have a cabinet in my kitchen that barely closes because there are so many bags in there. Try using those as wrapping paper instead. The plain brown side can be the side you see, and they actually look really nice. I got a gift wrapped in a brown paper bag, some twine as ribbon and a lavender spring as the bow. It looked so awesome, and guess what? Plastic free! Well minus the tape, but that's another story. That worked, and sure that bag turns into waste, but at least it isn't coated in plastic and glitter that become microplastics in the ocean. It can be recycled or decompose if it gets in the environment. It also gives life to those bags that sit there day after day as well. See I don't totally bag on gift giving here.
What about the gifts you give and receive. Are they thoughtful gifts? Or are they from a list of things someone made up. Maybe they made it up and put somethings on there that they don't really want or maybe already have but just want the latest version of. Don't buy them that, buy them something that comes from the heart (corny I know). Something that means you listen to them, you hear them talk about things they enjoy doing and you help feed that passion in them. Don't feed their need to consume. Show them you really care about them as a person, not a consuming vortex.
Had enough? Haha, I could go on all day! But since this post getting pretty long I want to wrap it up in an upcycled brown bag (get it? Wrap it up?!). How do you get out of the conventional Holiday spirit? Open your eyes, look at the things you are buying. Are you buying decorations for a holiday party? Are they kind of cheap feeling, made of plastic and covered in glitter? Guess what, its garbage anyways! Don't feed into it and leave it on the shelf. Make your own decorations, it's fall right? Go outside and get some pretty fallen leaves to decorate your table with. Look for some festive looking squash to decorate with, and later you can eat them! Don't pull the argument of "well it's already here, if I don't but it someone will". That's a cop out, plain and simple. If this is how you justify some actions I recommend taking an Economics class, the law of supply and demand will fascinate you. Throwing a party? Don't buy a shit load of single use plastic cups, please! Tell your guests to bring their own. It is so easy to do, and it saves so much waste. Really, just try it. Making cookies? Try making your own frosting, don't buy a bunch of small plastic tubs of different colors. Giving a gift? Give right. Instead of buying everyone you know a gift, maybe you can make them something or just write them a letter telling them how much they mean to you. My family pulls names over the holidays, the name you pull is the only gift you buy. That way we each get one gift, and we can focus our energy on each other in the morning. Not riffling through boxes and boxes of stuff we don't really need. Maybe instead of gift giving, you each give to a charity in honor of someone you would normally buy a gift for.
The list goes on, explore what you can do to make you Holiday footprint really small. It is possible, and guess what? It isn't weird to take a step back from the conventional Holidays, it feels quite nice actually. You don't have to buy gifts with lay away because you can't afford them. You don't have to fill up an entire piece of paper with gifts you "want". You can still have parties, hang with friends and celebrate the times. Just look at it as a whole, what are we really celebrating at this time of year?
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