How-to Green Your Christmas

Christmas has become one of the most commercial holidays of the year as well as being one of the most wasteful and hardest on the environment. People who normally are careful with spending, careful to use recycled products and to recycle all of a sudden become purveyors of ecological chaos.

It does not have to be this way. Christmas can be celebrated in high style without waste or leaving a carbon footprint the size of Alaska. Alot of what we do is habit and tradition and it would not take much for us to make new habits and update our traditions. If you are dreaming of a white Christmas be sure to leave out the carbon.

There are several ways to be eco-friendly and have your tree, too. Artificial trees, while they do save real trees, take a lot of energy and chemicals to manufacture.

If you have an artificial tree, take good care of it. We do have one and it was bought in 1986. We have been using it for 21 years and because we have taken good care of it the tree still looks good. When it starts to look a little ragged I will flock it and try to get another 10 years out of it. By doing this I am not adding to the landfill by throwing out this tree, nor am I encouraging the manufacture of more artificial trees.

If you need another tree consider checking the thrift shops and garage sales for artificial trees. If they need a little "sprucing up" you can flock them with the spray snow. By doing this you are keeping them form the landfill and adding years to their usefulness.

By a one time purchase of an artificial tree you also reduce gasoline that would have been used to transport your yearly live tree.

A live tree is always a great idea. Most of them are quite small, however, and for those of us that have 11 ft ceilings they just look....inadequate. They also often don't do well in the sudden temperature change to the warmth of a home. The benefit of a live tree is your ability to plant it after Christmas is over.

Organic tree form a tree farm. There are lots of tree farms that allow you to go and choose your own tree, cut it down, and take it home. Because the trees are planted to be cut and are replaced with seedlings they are not causing an imbalance in nature.

LED lights use less energy than the conventional lights. In fact, according to one U.S. Department of Energy study, if everyone replaced their conventional holiday lights with LEDs, at least two billion kilowatt-hours of electricity would be saved in a month. The savings would be enough to power 200,000 homes for a year, according to Littleton, Colorado-based Holiday Creations, which makes and distributes a popular line of LED light strings.

Handmade decorations from your own area is a great way to support the environment. Trimming greenery and using that, gluing glitter or salt crystals to pine cones and twigs, using dried plants and fruits - these are all good ways to decorate your home.

There are many beautiful decorations you can make by sewing, knitting, crochet, or quilling, and thousands upon thousands of websites with instructions.

You can also check your area stores as well as the internet for Fair Trade items. Fair Trade items handcrafted in poverty stricken areas and bought by consumers help families to make a living. They also tend to be very individual and unique items that you can be proud of.

What about making paper chains from newspapers? A great way to recycle the papers and have some interesting decorations. I personally like to spray paint them, although that is not the most eco-friendly option.

Try not to decorate with anything you can't compost!

You can also find lots of decorations at thrift stores and garage sales. It is a simple thing to fix them up to be beautiful and you are keeping them out of the trash.

1. Be gentle on the environment by reusing gift bags year to year.

2. Use unusual wraps. Fabric, wallpaper scraps, newspaper, brown lunch sacks tied at the top with raffia....there are many ways to present a gift creatively.

3. Use dried flowers instead of ribbon

4. Use raffia, fabric strips, or twine for a homespun look

5. Tape a couple of candy canes to the top of the gift.

If you are using wrapping paper use recycled wrapping paper and recycle it when you are done. If you are careful you can save the used paper to be used another year.

Gifts can be hard on the environment. We travel from store to store to store looking for just the right item and use gasoline. We end up buying cheap things from Wal-mart only to find out that they have been recalled. What can you do?

1. Buy Fair Trade items. Again, fair trade gifts are unique and a great way to be supportive.

2. Buy (and give)a battery charger and use rechargeable batteries

3.Make your own gifts

4. Give the gift of time

5. Check out these homemade toys, unique gift ideas, or these from the heart

Remember that after the holidays the real tree you used can be put in the back yard as a shelter for birds and small animals and then made into mulch with the use of a chipper in the spring.

Homemade and simple holidays are very fulfilling, and put the focus back on the spiritual/social aspects of the Christmas season rather than the commercial ones. Without the huge bills coming in in January you will greatly reduce your stress and may even find you have enough extra to treat yourself to a large mug of fair trade coffee and an organic chocolate bar!