Just 24 More Days
Dec 01, 2009
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We'll have some holiday fun this month as we countdown to that ultimate holiday celebration . . . it's great to celebrate the season, while over-spending, over-eating, and over-stressing. You have plenty of sites telling you how unsustainable Christmas and the holidays are, so I won't pester you by lecturing how bad all those holiday traditions are for the planet.I'll tell you what we're doing to give our Christmas a little more tinge of green:
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The tree: I go back and forth between paper and plastic, I mean, real and fake. If you have garden waste recycling or a local Boy Scout troop that will pick up your tree, I'd say go for the real. Check the store's tree sources to make sure Scandinavia isn't being mowed down to decorate your living room, and enjoy that scent for a few weeks! I hear some advocate for plastic trees, since you're using it over and over . . . but in the end, it's still plastic. And now that LED lights are dirt cheap even before the after-Christmas sale, you can feel a little less guilt about leaving those lights on.
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Gifts: Talk about stress and waste! As our family has grown, we've decided to do a "secret Santa," where we buy something nice for one person, with a spending limit. That's more meaningful and reduces waste easily. Plus we'll do the white elephant gift charade, which is a fun and harmless way to get rid of those items scattered about your house that you do not want.
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Cards: I have seen postings saying sending holiday cards is bad due to the waste of paper, fuel spent sending cards, etc. I can't help but smirk. There's nothing wrong with good old-fashioned manners, keeping in touch with folks with whom you only communicate once a year, and sending an email spam blast or just updating your Facebook status is tacky. Plus, the waste from paper isn't from people sending holiday cards, it's all that junk mail that companies relentless send to us filled with garbage we don't need.
Speaking of cards, we've decided to save some money. If you're like us, you've bought post cards over the years that . . . you never sent. Ours were just sitting in a box, so . . . we decided to have some fun by buying some stickers from the 99¢ Only Store (probably not the greenest option, but convenient, and we recycled the "MARRY CHRIASTMAS" goofs), and thought we'd decorate the cards and send them to friends and family. We'll be sending around 80 in total. I have no idea why most of them were from Korea, Armenia, DC, and a Turkish Bath in Istanbul, but anyway, through the 25th we'll share some our favorites, starting with today: a late fall scene in DC.
Please share your holiday ideas with us: we'd love to hear from you!
