Nimue Brown's Blog, page 227

Unwanted gifts

You may at this point in the year have one or two gifts that are neither use nor ornament. Sending these to landfill is the quick and easy option that adds to the obscenity of waste we collectively create over the festive period.

Give it away. Take it to a charity shop. Find your local freecycle or freegle group. Sell it on ebay.

Then, if you’re feeling brave and radical, talk to the people who give you gifts that you don’t really want or need. Talk to them about consumerism, and waste, and the environment. Talk about how less can be more, and you’d rather they didn’t spend their money on things you don’t want and can’t use.

This of course means risking offending people. They meant well, and you probably don’t want to hurt their feelings. Except that this kind of well meaning behaviour supports our consumerist, capitalist society. If we’re all too worried about each other’s feelings to talk about how much pointless tat floats about each midwinter, we’ll keep pillaging the world for the raw materials, making that into the useless tat – using energy, buying said useless tat, wrapping it in paper, giving it to each other and finally throwing it away. Profits are made for some, and the costs to the environment are huge.

Do nothing, it’s lovely!

If you life is filled with noise and activity, then doing nothing can be one of the most beautiful gifts you can give yourself. To lie in bed for a few extra hours and just let your mind wander. To sit by a window and gaze out of it, and notice what goes by. To watch a fire, or enjoy candle light. Snuggle with a pet, a person, or interesting combinations thereof!

Many of us are under a lot of pressure to be doing. Be busy. Be productive. Make money. Spend money. If all you get to do is run round franticly, you’ll barely know who you are, how you feel and what you want. You can end up with an emptiness on the inside, and only more noise, activity and consumption to try and fill it with. Stillness and silence can be scary at first, if it means sitting down with yourself for a while. However, once you get past that fear, the gifts it brings are many, and large.

If we want to deal with the rampant consumerism that is killing the planet and that will destroy us if we don’t tackle it, we need to deal with the reasons we’re so fond of the consumerism in the first place. Stopping, being quiet, being alone with ourselves, being in an unstimulating place with others – is key to this. Talk to the people around you. Listen to them. Go to bed early. Turn off the noise, the lights, the distractions and listen to your heart for a while. Find out what you really need.

Social justice isn’t just for Christmas

Christmas is a time for giving, for charity, for doing a shift at the local homeless shelter. If you’ve had any contact with the Christian messages associated with the season, you’ll be familiar with the charitable aspect.

However, if your giving and your social justice activities are just for Christmas, pause and ask yourself why that is. Equally, if those around you only seem to care seasonally, see if you can start a conversation about why that might be. Homeless people will still be cold and suffering in January. Charities will still need supporting.

The trouble with having a charitable dabble over the festive period is that it can ease our consciences and make us feel better about ourselves. It has a similar function to those old Lord of Misrule, Twelfth Night and Saturnalia celebrations. You get it all out of your system over a few days, and by this means, the status quo is maintained over the rest of the year.

Just as pretending a twelve year old is the Bishop for one day of the year isn’t actually a cultural revolution, a bit of seasonal charity isn’t social justice. If we want radical change, we have to commit to it as a whole year round thing. We have to start calling out the people who think they can rock up at a shelter or a food bank in December and thus qualify as decent human beings. Especially when they happen to be politicians whose policies created all the misery in the first place.

Broken it already?

How many children’s toys don’t survive to the New Year? How many go into landfill, adding to the enormous amount of waste the UK generates around midwinter?

If you have broken toys to deal with, rather than putting them in the bin, why not see if there’s a Repair Cafe near you? https://repaircafe.org/en/

Repair Cafes operate all year round, and fix all kinds of broken things to keep them out of landfill. My local one ran a toy hospital before Christmas, and is doing a broken toy session again in January.

Broken toys are also an opportunity to play, create and mess about. If the toy is broken, it’s not a risky activity. You might be able to Frankenstein it into something new. If your kids are old enough to be unleashed, why not let them remake the broken things into new, fabulous, hideous designs? So much of what’s available to children is pre-imagined for them and connects to existing TV shows, so objects all too often come with their stories in place, narrowing the space for imaginative play. By turning broken toys into new toys, you give them a chance to create their own worlds.

Dealing with a dead tree

In the aftermath of Christmas, a great many trees will be burned or sent to landfill. I blogged earlier in the season about alternatives to cut trees (still better than plastic trees). However, we’re now at the point where you’ll be thinking about what to do with the tree, if you have one.

If you don’t have a tree, well done! Please feel virtuous and easy of conscience at this point because you’ve already done the most environmentally responsible thing you could do on this score.

If you are in the UK, your local authority may well have a tree collection point for chipping and deployment – chipped trees can be used to help maintain paths, and this kind of re-use reduces their impact.

In some areas, charities are collecting trees for a donation, and then recycling them as chippings.

Find a responsible way of dealing with your dead tree. Don’t send it to landfill.

And really, Pagans, if you’ve killed a tree to celebrate midwinter, you might want to have a think about this.

Re-use or recycle your cards

I’ve seen estimates of a billion cards going in the bin after Christmas. I’ve seen estimates of several hundred thousand trees needing to be felled to make those cards in the first place. I’ve not tracked down any definite figures online, but it doesn’t take much thinking to consider how many cards might be sent, and what it took to create them and come to the conclusion that it’s a very high environmental cost, regardless of the precise figures.

At this point, you may have cards. How you dispose of them will make a difference.

You could cut them down for reuse, as gift labels. You could use them in future crafting projects. You could give them to a charity that can make money recycling them. You could recycle them if they aren’t covered in non-recyclable things.

For the longer term, you can think about buying recycled cards to reduce impact on trees. Buy smaller cards that use less material and create less waste. Consider not giving cards.

Cards are an example of things we think of us just a bit of seasonal fun and goodwill. How much harm is it ok to cause for the sake of a bit of fun and festivity?

Rubbish Crackers, let’s not!

They come in boxes, usually with a non recyclable plastic front. You get the momentary cheer of pulling them. Out pops a non-recyclable bit of plastic tat, and a couple of bits of paper – a hat that will likely tear as you try to put it on, and a crappy joke.

If you shop around online and through eco-outlets, you can find all kinds of exciting alternatives, with worthwhile things in them, and no plastic. But even so, I question the logic of the cracker. There are many ways to dress up a table, they aren’t necessary for that. I detest the paper hats, for me they represent all the forced jollity I hate about the season. If you want people to wear brightly coloured hats for the meal, why not invest in some brightly coloured hats that can be re-used?

So much more rubbish goes to landfill over the festive period. It’s worth looking at what you think is normal, and questioning it. Crackers are not that great when you stop and think about how much pleasure you derive from them compared to what they cost and how much needless waste they generate.

Greener Christmas – spread out the feasting

Food waste at Christmas comes in no small part because we aren’t doing excess well. So much of the attention is focused on one day, and one meal. So you’ve got a roast, gravy, and veg and trimmings and pudding and mince pieces and Christmas cake and cheese and maybe there was a starter and perhaps you bought a bag of nuts… and by late afternoon on Christmas day no one even wants to look at it.

I heard a chap on the radio suggest that some people sit down to consume in the region of 3000 calories in that one meal. It’s hard on your body, doing that. It also isn’t that much fun. Excess can be fun, but not when your stomach hurts and you feel bloated and unable to move.

The trick to excess, is pacing. Why feast on the one day? Why not spread it out a bit? Puddings, pies and cakes on different days, perhaps. Several roast dinners of manageable proportions. That way, it’s easier to manage the flow of food, and the use of leftovers and not end up throwing much out. It also means you can skip gleefully into the New Year rather than feeling horrible, guilt laden and like you have to take up penance activities.

Cut your food waste, increase your enjoyment, make it easier on your body, and have a better time of it all round. Our Pagan ancestors took their time over midwinter feasting and festivities, and we should too.

Greener Christmas – keep the light levels down

Christmas decorations that light up are a way of warding off the darkness at the darkest part of the year. They are an antidote to short days and grim, wintery weather, and that’s fair enough, but less, is definitely more.

Consider the raw materials that go into making lights and the wires that connect them. Consider the energy required to power them. Consider the light pollution if you put a lot of them up outside. Consider how that extra light may impact on those around you, and also on wild things.

I’m probably preaching to the converted here. I find it hard to imagine Druids plastering the outsides of their homes in flashing lights made out of plastic, or running up the electric bills to burn brightly through the night.

I hate the wasteful excess of it all, and the ones that flash I find maddening. How do we persuade people to give up on this? I can understand the urge to have a bit of light, cheer and prettiness. But the mad excesses (yes, I have a near neighbour who does this) confuses me. Beyond a certain level, it’s just invasive. I can see no joy in it. I don’t know how to persuade people whose motives make so little sense to me, so if you have any insights, please pile into the comments.

Greener Christmas – cut out the plastic

Here’s a simple tip to make Christmas greener: Cut out the plastic. Don’t buy anything that has significant packaging on it – all those gift boxes the supermarkets like to put together are just bundles of waste that have to be dealt with. Let’s send them a clear message that we don’t actually want a ton of extra packaging as part of the season.

Don’t buy plastic disposable things.

Don’t buy gifts in single use plastic packaging.

Don’t buy gifts that are themselves made of plastic – especially not the kinds of cheap children’s toys that are likely to break soon and wind up in the bin.

It can be tempting, especially when buying for children, to want to present them with a big mound of gifts to open. It is of course more affordable to do this by purchasing lots of cheap, plastic toys. Overwhelming a child with low value things that will go in the bin teaches them some unhelpful lessons about consumption and waste and will set patterns they’ll have a hard time breaking in later life. If they can break them at all. It is much better to have fewer things of better quality and to learn to take care of them and value them.