I’ll Have a Green Christmas Without You
Just read the cover story of Sunday's NY Times Style section and thought I'd bring it up here.
To summarize, it was about how this year's Christmas-stealing "Grinch" is the loopy environmentalist in your family, who wants to fore-go exchanging new store-bought presents for more eco-friendly options - like chore trading, recycled gifts, no wrapping paper, etc. The tone of the article was that this person is a bummer and that Christmas is not a time for austerity... or perhaps I'm editorializing.
For the sake of full disclosure, I have to admit here that Christmas is not my holiday. So I read this article through the cool, steely eyes of a Jewish girl who always envied the over-the-top-ness of my Christmas celebrating friends (and, well, the rest of the world) at this time of year. And if those tree-hugging hippies ever came after Rosh Hashona, I would be PISSED. (Um, I'm kidding of course... I mean, how could you make the Jewish holidays MORE green??? We don't really "do" anything... besides eat and walk everywhere.)
Anyway... for conservation to work on a large scale, the Green movement has to come up with some convenient, win/win ways for the rest of the country (meaning, west of Santa Monica and east of Vermont) to hop on board. This shift in attitude will have to be all-encompassing - from our government, through the corporations and institutions, on down to the consumer. I don't think that ix-naying my little niece Isabel's Polly Pocket set (as loathsome as I find those things), is the way to go about it.
I saw Al Gore's movie. And I agree that the smaller things add up. But don't you think there might be a backlash if Christmas becomes the new target of the Green movement? Couldn't this be another way to marginalize a very crucial issue as mean-spirited and a little crazy? Or maybe this could be spun as a WWJD, stewards-of -the-earth kind of thing? Maybe it is the time of year to consider all that our planet gives us and try to give back... For some reason, I doubt it.
Thoughts?
But then you would probably lose the less religious type of Christmas celebrant...of which there are many...who don't actually go to church or really spend much time contemplating the religious implications of the holiday.
Maybe the focus should be on conserving all year, and Christmas can be the one time when you let things go a bit, which would make it even More special. Would that fly? If you plant 30 trees during the year, then you can purchase one for Christmas...if not, artificial tree for you. If you eschew wrapping paper for birthdays during the year, then you can use it for Christmas guilt-free. If you reduce your use of electricity all year, then you can put up the holiday lights and feel good about it.
So you're not targeting Christmas, you're making all the excesses of it a reward rather than a necessity.
maybe?
asfunction:playTune,1
This girl has a voice that you just have to hear! I'm not going to write anything else about her, her voice speaks for her and her alone. There is no promotion or advertising needed. She has the "GIFT"....
Since you admit Christmas just isn't your favorite holiday you might find it pretty funny that "Entertainment Weekly" just named Jill's "Christmas is the Saddest Day of the Year" as its 10th "Greatest Christmas Bummer" song of all time (out of 100). They write, "Some holiday-pobes will hold this truth to be self-evident."