Showing posts with label holiday: christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday: christmas. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2009
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Stress, depression, and the holidays: 12 tips for coping
Stress, depression and the holidays: 12 tips for coping
http://www.mayoclinic.com/print/stress/MH00030/METHOD=print
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress/MH00030
For some people, the holidays bring unwelcome guests — stress and depression. And it's no wonder. In an effort to pull off a perfect Hallmark holiday, you might find yourself facing a dizzying array of demands — work, parties, shopping, baking, cleaning, caring for elderly parents or kids on school break, and scores of other chores. So much for peace and joy, right?
Actually, with some practical tips, you can minimize the stress and depression that often accompany the holidays. You may even end up enjoying the holidays more than you thought you would.
The trigger points of holiday stress and depression
Holiday stress and depression are often the result of three main trigger points. Understanding these trigger points can help you plan ahead on how to accommodate them.
The three main trigger points of holiday stress or depression:
* Relationships. Relationships can cause turmoil, conflict or stress at any time. But tensions are often heightened during the holidays. Family misunderstandings and conflicts can intensify — especially if you're all thrust together for several days. Conflicts are bound to arise with so many different personalities, needs and interests. On the other hand, if you're facing the holidays without a loved one, you may find yourself especially lonely or sad.
* Finances. Like your relationships, your financial situation can cause stress at any time of the year. But overspending during the holidays on gifts, travel, food and entertainment can increase stress as you try to make ends meet while ensuring that everyone on your gift list is happy. You may find yourself in a financial spiral that leaves you with depression symptoms such as hopelessness, sadness and helplessness.
* Physical demands. The strain of shopping, attending social gatherings and preparing holiday meals can wipe you out. Feeling exhausted increases your stress, creating a vicious cycle. Exercise and sleep — good antidotes for stress and fatigue — may take a back seat to chores and errands. High demands, stress, lack of exercise, and overindulgence in food and drink — all are ingredients for holiday illness.
12 tips to prevent holiday stress and depression
When stress is at its peak, it's hard to stop and regroup. Try to prevent stress and depression in the first place, especially if you know the holidays have taken an emotional toll in previous years.
Tips you can try to head off holiday stress and depression:
1. Acknowledge your feelings. If a loved one has recently died or you aren't able to be with your loved ones, realize that it's normal to feel sadness or grief. It's OK now and then to take time just to cry or express your feelings. You can't force yourself to be happy just because it's the holiday season.
2. Seek support. If you feel isolated or down, seek out family members and friends, or community, religious or social services. They can offer support and companionship. Consider volunteering at a community or religious function. Getting involved and helping others can lift your spirits and broaden your friendships. Also, enlist support for organizing holiday gatherings, as well as meal preparation and cleanup. You don't have to go it alone. Don't be a martyr.
3. Be realistic. As families change and grow, traditions and rituals often change as well. Hold on to those you can and want to. But accept that you may have to let go of others. For example, if your adult children and grandchildren can't all gather at your house as usual, find new ways to celebrate together from afar, such as sharing pictures, e-mails or videotapes.
4. Set differences aside. Try to accept family members and friends as they are, even if they don't live up to all your expectations. Practice forgiveness. Set aside grievances until a more appropriate time for discussion. With stress and activity levels high, the holidays might not be conducive to making quality time for relationships. And be understanding if others get upset or distressed when something goes awry. Chances are they're feeling the effects of holiday stress and depression, too.
5. Stick to a budget. Before you go shopping, decide how much money you can afford to spend on gifts and other items. Then be sure to stick to your budget. If you don't, you could feel anxious and tense for months afterward as you struggle to pay the bills. Don't try to buy happiness with an avalanche of gifts. Donate to a charity in someone's name, give homemade gifts or start a family gift exchange.
6. Plan ahead. Set aside specific days for shopping, baking, visiting friends and other activities. Plan your menus and then make one big food-shopping trip. That'll help prevent a last-minute scramble to buy forgotten ingredients — and you'll have time to make another pie, if the first one's a flop. Expect travel delays, especially if you're flying.
7. Learn to say no. Believe it or not, people will understand if you can't do certain projects or activities. If you say yes only to what you really want to do, you'll avoid feeling resentful, bitter and overwhelmed. If it's really not possible to say no when your boss asks you to work overtime, try to remove something else from your agenda to make up for the lost time.
8. Don't abandon healthy habits. Don't let the holidays become a dietary free-for-all. Some indulgence is OK, but overindulgence only adds to your stress and guilt. Have a healthy snack before holiday parties so that you don't go overboard on sweets, cheese or drinks. Continue to get plenty of sleep and schedule time for physical activity.
9. Take a breather. Make some time for yourself. Spending just 15 minutes alone, without distractions, may refresh you enough to handle everything you need to do. Steal away to a quiet place, even if it's to the bathroom for a few moments of solitude. Take a walk at night and stargaze. Listen to soothing music. Find something that reduces stress by clearing your mind, slowing your breathing and restoring inner calm.
10. Rethink resolutions. Resolutions can set you up for failure if they're unrealistic. Don't resolve to change your whole life to make up for past excess. Instead, try to return to basic, healthy lifestyle routines. Set smaller, more specific goals with a reasonable time frame. Choose only those resolutions that help you feel valuable and that provide more than only fleeting moments of happiness.
11. Forget about perfection. Holiday TV specials are filled with happy endings. But in real life, people don't usually resolve problems within an hour or two. Something always comes up. You may get stuck late at the office and miss your daughter's school play, your sister may dredge up an old argument, your partner may burn the cookies, and your mother may criticize how you're raising the kids. All in the same day. Accept imperfections in yourself and in others.
12. Seek professional help if you need it. Despite your best efforts, you may find yourself feeling persistently sad or anxious, plagued by physical complaints, unable to sleep, irritable and hopeless, and unable to face routine chores. If these feelings last for several weeks, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional. You may have depression.
Take back control of holiday stress and depression
Remember, one key to minimizing holiday stress and depression is knowing that the holidays can trigger stress and depression. Accept that things aren't always going to go as planned. Then take active steps to manage stress and depression during the holidays. You may actually enjoy the holidays this year more than you thought you could.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/
http://www.mayoclinic.com/
For some people, the holidays bring unwelcome guests — stress and depression. And it's no wonder. In an effort to pull off a perfect Hallmark holiday, you might find yourself facing a dizzying array of demands — work, parties, shopping, baking, cleaning, caring for elderly parents or kids on school break, and scores of other chores. So much for peace and joy, right?
Actually, with some practical tips, you can minimize the stress and depression that often accompany the holidays. You may even end up enjoying the holidays more than you thought you would.
The trigger points of holiday stress and depression
Holiday stress and depression are often the result of three main trigger points. Understanding these trigger points can help you plan ahead on how to accommodate them.
The three main trigger points of holiday stress or depression:
* Relationships. Relationships can cause turmoil, conflict or stress at any time. But tensions are often heightened during the holidays. Family misunderstandings and conflicts can intensify — especially if you're all thrust together for several days. Conflicts are bound to arise with so many different personalities, needs and interests. On the other hand, if you're facing the holidays without a loved one, you may find yourself especially lonely or sad.
* Finances. Like your relationships, your financial situation can cause stress at any time of the year. But overspending during the holidays on gifts, travel, food and entertainment can increase stress as you try to make ends meet while ensuring that everyone on your gift list is happy. You may find yourself in a financial spiral that leaves you with depression symptoms such as hopelessness, sadness and helplessness.
* Physical demands. The strain of shopping, attending social gatherings and preparing holiday meals can wipe you out. Feeling exhausted increases your stress, creating a vicious cycle. Exercise and sleep — good antidotes for stress and fatigue — may take a back seat to chores and errands. High demands, stress, lack of exercise, and overindulgence in food and drink — all are ingredients for holiday illness.
12 tips to prevent holiday stress and depression
When stress is at its peak, it's hard to stop and regroup. Try to prevent stress and depression in the first place, especially if you know the holidays have taken an emotional toll in previous years.
Tips you can try to head off holiday stress and depression:
1. Acknowledge your feelings. If a loved one has recently died or you aren't able to be with your loved ones, realize that it's normal to feel sadness or grief. It's OK now and then to take time just to cry or express your feelings. You can't force yourself to be happy just because it's the holiday season.
2. Seek support. If you feel isolated or down, seek out family members and friends, or community, religious or social services. They can offer support and companionship. Consider volunteering at a community or religious function. Getting involved and helping others can lift your spirits and broaden your friendships. Also, enlist support for organizing holiday gatherings, as well as meal preparation and cleanup. You don't have to go it alone. Don't be a martyr.
3. Be realistic. As families change and grow, traditions and rituals often change as well. Hold on to those you can and want to. But accept that you may have to let go of others. For example, if your adult children and grandchildren can't all gather at your house as usual, find new ways to celebrate together from afar, such as sharing pictures, e-mails or videotapes.
4. Set differences aside. Try to accept family members and friends as they are, even if they don't live up to all your expectations. Practice forgiveness. Set aside grievances until a more appropriate time for discussion. With stress and activity levels high, the holidays might not be conducive to making quality time for relationships. And be understanding if others get upset or distressed when something goes awry. Chances are they're feeling the effects of holiday stress and depression, too.
5. Stick to a budget. Before you go shopping, decide how much money you can afford to spend on gifts and other items. Then be sure to stick to your budget. If you don't, you could feel anxious and tense for months afterward as you struggle to pay the bills. Don't try to buy happiness with an avalanche of gifts. Donate to a charity in someone's name, give homemade gifts or start a family gift exchange.
6. Plan ahead. Set aside specific days for shopping, baking, visiting friends and other activities. Plan your menus and then make one big food-shopping trip. That'll help prevent a last-minute scramble to buy forgotten ingredients — and you'll have time to make another pie, if the first one's a flop. Expect travel delays, especially if you're flying.
7. Learn to say no. Believe it or not, people will understand if you can't do certain projects or activities. If you say yes only to what you really want to do, you'll avoid feeling resentful, bitter and overwhelmed. If it's really not possible to say no when your boss asks you to work overtime, try to remove something else from your agenda to make up for the lost time.
8. Don't abandon healthy habits. Don't let the holidays become a dietary free-for-all. Some indulgence is OK, but overindulgence only adds to your stress and guilt. Have a healthy snack before holiday parties so that you don't go overboard on sweets, cheese or drinks. Continue to get plenty of sleep and schedule time for physical activity.
9. Take a breather. Make some time for yourself. Spending just 15 minutes alone, without distractions, may refresh you enough to handle everything you need to do. Steal away to a quiet place, even if it's to the bathroom for a few moments of solitude. Take a walk at night and stargaze. Listen to soothing music. Find something that reduces stress by clearing your mind, slowing your breathing and restoring inner calm.
10. Rethink resolutions. Resolutions can set you up for failure if they're unrealistic. Don't resolve to change your whole life to make up for past excess. Instead, try to return to basic, healthy lifestyle routines. Set smaller, more specific goals with a reasonable time frame. Choose only those resolutions that help you feel valuable and that provide more than only fleeting moments of happiness.
11. Forget about perfection. Holiday TV specials are filled with happy endings. But in real life, people don't usually resolve problems within an hour or two. Something always comes up. You may get stuck late at the office and miss your daughter's school play, your sister may dredge up an old argument, your partner may burn the cookies, and your mother may criticize how you're raising the kids. All in the same day. Accept imperfections in yourself and in others.
12. Seek professional help if you need it. Despite your best efforts, you may find yourself feeling persistently sad or anxious, plagued by physical complaints, unable to sleep, irritable and hopeless, and unable to face routine chores. If these feelings last for several weeks, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional. You may have depression.
Take back control of holiday stress and depression
Remember, one key to minimizing holiday stress and depression is knowing that the holidays can trigger stress and depression. Accept that things aren't always going to go as planned. Then take active steps to manage stress and depression during the holidays. You may actually enjoy the holidays this year more than you thought you could.
Healing Holiday Herbs
Healing Holiday Herbs
Aside from lending visual and symbolic appeal, many of the holiday herbs historically used to ring in the season have medicinal benefits as well.
By Brigitte Mars
http://www.yogajournal.com/health/516_1.cfm?ctsrc=nlv183
No matter what holiday tradition you celebrate this winter, chances are you'll incorporate a fir tree, a potted poinsettia, or other significant plants in the festivities. Aside from lending visual and symbolic appeal, many of the holiday herbs historically used to ring in the season have medicinal benefits as well.
Take pine (Pinus species), for instance, which appears in cough syrups. This expectorant and antioxidant helps lung-related complaints such as asthma and respiratory infections. For this reason, Dr. Alfred Vogel, the late Swiss herbalist, used pine syrup in his popular cough formulas. Pine tea added to a bath relieves sore muscles, while pine sap in a salve benefits eczema and psoriasis and draws out splinters.
We can clearly see why gold figured as a valuable gift in the age of the three wise men. But what about frankincense and myrrh? In the Middle East, people burned these resins to help purify the air, especially in public places of worship, where airborne disease presented a particular health threat. Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha), a plant native to the Red Sea region, served as a disinfectant, destroying bacteria and stimulating white blood cell production. Small amounts of the resin, usually used in tincture form, also treat gum infections, candida, impetigo, lung infections, and arthritis. (Use only small amounts of myrrh for brief periods of time, as excessive use may be toxic.) In traditional European and Ayurvedic medicine, the pale-colored resin of frankincense (Boswellia carteri) taken internally helped treat dysentery, fevers, vomiting, and menstrual cramps. Topical applications improve arthritis, athletic injuries, bruises, acne, and tumors.
Mistletoe ( Viscum album in Europe and Phoradendron serotinum in America) appeared as far back as 200 B.C. in the winter celebrations of the Druids, who gathered sprigs of the plant and hung them in their homes for good fortune. Herbalists today use small amounts of the herb to lower blood pressure, promote menstrual flow, and as a diuretic. (Mistletoe, especially the American variety, can be toxic, so use only under an herbalist's supervision, and always keep the plant away from children.) In the anthroposophical medicine of the Austrian philosopher and educator Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), mistletoe even factors as a cancer treatment in a formula called Iscar that works as an immuno-modulator. Like many holiday herbs, its cultural significance as a winter-celebration plant endures in tandem with its healing benefits.
November/December 1999
Aside from lending visual and symbolic appeal, many of the holiday herbs historically used to ring in the season have medicinal benefits as well.
By Brigitte Mars
http://www.yogajournal.com/
No matter what holiday tradition you celebrate this winter, chances are you'll incorporate a fir tree, a potted poinsettia, or other significant plants in the festivities. Aside from lending visual and symbolic appeal, many of the holiday herbs historically used to ring in the season have medicinal benefits as well.
Take pine (Pinus species), for instance, which appears in cough syrups. This expectorant and antioxidant helps lung-related complaints such as asthma and respiratory infections. For this reason, Dr. Alfred Vogel, the late Swiss herbalist, used pine syrup in his popular cough formulas. Pine tea added to a bath relieves sore muscles, while pine sap in a salve benefits eczema and psoriasis and draws out splinters.
We can clearly see why gold figured as a valuable gift in the age of the three wise men. But what about frankincense and myrrh? In the Middle East, people burned these resins to help purify the air, especially in public places of worship, where airborne disease presented a particular health threat. Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha), a plant native to the Red Sea region, served as a disinfectant, destroying bacteria and stimulating white blood cell production. Small amounts of the resin, usually used in tincture form, also treat gum infections, candida, impetigo, lung infections, and arthritis. (Use only small amounts of myrrh for brief periods of time, as excessive use may be toxic.) In traditional European and Ayurvedic medicine, the pale-colored resin of frankincense (Boswellia carteri) taken internally helped treat dysentery, fevers, vomiting, and menstrual cramps. Topical applications improve arthritis, athletic injuries, bruises, acne, and tumors.
Mistletoe ( Viscum album in Europe and Phoradendron serotinum in America) appeared as far back as 200 B.C. in the winter celebrations of the Druids, who gathered sprigs of the plant and hung them in their homes for good fortune. Herbalists today use small amounts of the herb to lower blood pressure, promote menstrual flow, and as a diuretic. (Mistletoe, especially the American variety, can be toxic, so use only under an herbalist's supervision, and always keep the plant away from children.) In the anthroposophical medicine of the Austrian philosopher and educator Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), mistletoe even factors as a cancer treatment in a formula called Iscar that works as an immuno-modulator. Like many holiday herbs, its cultural significance as a winter-celebration plant endures in tandem with its healing benefits.
November/December 1999
Monday, December 15, 2008
Christmas Poem - source unknown
Christmas Poem
'Tis the night before Christmas and all through the town,
every shelter is full - we are lost but not found,
Our numbers are hung on our kennels so bare,
we hope every minute that someone will care,
They'll come to adopt us and give us the call,
"Come here, Max and Sparkie - come fetch your new ball!!
But now we sit here and think of the days..
we were treated so fondly - we had cute, baby ways,
Once we were little, then we grew and we grew -
now we're no longer young and we're no longer new.
So out the back door we were thrown like the trash,
they reacted so quickly - why were they so rash?
We "jump on the children:, "don't come when they call",
we "bark when they leave us", climb over the wall.
We should have been neutered, we should have been spayed,
now we suffer the consequence of the errors THEY made.
If only they'd trained us, if only we knew...
we'd have done what they asked us and worshiped them, too.
We were left in the backyard, or worse -let to roam-
now we're tired and lonely and out of a home.
They dropped us off here and they kissed us good-bye...
"Maybe someone else will give you a try."
So now here we are, all confused and alone...
in a shelter with others who long for a home.
The kind workers come through with a meal and a pat,
with so many to care for, they can't stay to chat,
They move to the next kennel, giving each of us cheer...
we know that they wonder how long we'll be here.
We lay down to sleep and sweet dreams fill our heads..
of a home filled with love and our own cozy beds.
Then we wake to see sad eyes, brimming with tears --
our friends filled with emptiness, worry, and fear.
If you can't adopt us and there's no room at the Inn --
could you help with the bills and fill our food bin?
We count on your kindness each day of the year --
can you give more than hope to everyone here?
Please make a donation to pay for the heat...
and help get us something special to eat.
The shelter that cares for us wants us to live,
and more of us will, if more people will give.
'Tis the night before Christmas and all through the town,
every shelter is full - we are lost but not found,
Our numbers are hung on our kennels so bare,
we hope every minute that someone will care,
They'll come to adopt us and give us the call,
"Come here, Max and Sparkie - come fetch your new ball!!
But now we sit here and think of the days..
we were treated so fondly - we had cute, baby ways,
Once we were little, then we grew and we grew -
now we're no longer young and we're no longer new.
So out the back door we were thrown like the trash,
they reacted so quickly - why were they so rash?
We "jump on the children:, "don't come when they call",
we "bark when they leave us", climb over the wall.
We should have been neutered, we should have been spayed,
now we suffer the consequence of the errors THEY made.
If only they'd trained us, if only we knew...
we'd have done what they asked us and worshiped them, too.
We were left in the backyard, or worse -let to roam-
now we're tired and lonely and out of a home.
They dropped us off here and they kissed us good-bye...
"Maybe someone else will give you a try."
So now here we are, all confused and alone...
in a shelter with others who long for a home.
The kind workers come through with a meal and a pat,
with so many to care for, they can't stay to chat,
They move to the next kennel, giving each of us cheer...
we know that they wonder how long we'll be here.
We lay down to sleep and sweet dreams fill our heads..
of a home filled with love and our own cozy beds.
Then we wake to see sad eyes, brimming with tears --
our friends filled with emptiness, worry, and fear.
If you can't adopt us and there's no room at the Inn --
could you help with the bills and fill our food bin?
We count on your kindness each day of the year --
can you give more than hope to everyone here?
Please make a donation to pay for the heat...
and help get us something special to eat.
The shelter that cares for us wants us to live,
and more of us will, if more people will give.
Friday, December 5, 2008
The Problem with Christmas: Are you brave enough to say no to a high stress holiday?
The Problem With Christmas
Are you brave enough to say no to a high-stress holiday?
By Bill McKibben
20 Nov 2007
http://www.grist.org/cgi-bin/printthis.pl?uri=/feature/2007/11/20/say-no/index.html
http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/11/20/say-no/?source=daily
The problem with Christmas is not the batteries. The problem isn't even really the stuff. The problem with Christmas is that no one much likes it anymore.
If you poll Americans this time of year, far more of them regard the approaching holidays with dread than anticipation. It has long since become too busy, too expensive, too centered around acquiring that which we do not need. In fact, it's the perfect crystallization of the American economy -- the American consumer experience squeezed into a manic week, a week that people find themselves hoping will soon end so that on Jan. 2 they can return to the mere routine hecticity of their lives.
From that central truth, a few propositions follow:
* Replacing regular stuff with green stuff isn't getting very close to the root of the problem. If for some reason you need to give someone a motorized spice rack, then a motorized spice rack with a more efficient motor is quite clearly better. But it's also quite clearly beside the point.
* Stuff itself is a problem less because of its environmental toll (though that is quite high) than because it's increasingly meaningless. Think of your friends. Are many of them lacking in stuff? Or is the first question that forms in their minds when a new gift arrives from under the tree: "Where am I going to put this?"
* But this pleasure gap allows for a concentrated opportunity to begin rethinking our economic life. If stuff isn't valuable anymore, what is? Time, clearly. A gift of time -- a coupon for a back rub, or a trip to the museum, or a dinner prepared someday in the future -- is a gift whose exchange rate is figured in a stronger currency (if you're an economics major, think euros vs. dollars). Or gifts can come embedded with time already spent: a jar of homemade jam, a stack of firewood in the back yard.
* Gifts can also be reconfigured to remove some of the hyperindividualism that marks our consumer society. Ask yourself what you'd rather receive: another thing, or a homemade card saying that, say, a cow had been purchased in your name and was now providing milk for a Tanzanian family that hadn't had milk before. (Note: this line of reasoning is probably especially strong for those of us who are Christians, and recall that the occasion we're celebrating is the birth of a man who said to give all that we had to the poor.)
* Since Christmas has long been in the business of baptizing consumption, it's a good place to start eroding consumption's allure. Newfound pleasures from a simpler holiday -- some silence, some companionship -- suddenly start to seem attractive. Maybe that attraction will remain with us yea even unto February.
That would be good, because our environmental problem, at root, isn't that the stuff we're buying uses too much energy or too much plastic, or that its paint has lead in it, or that it's been shipped too far. Our environmental problem is that we consume way too much because we've agreed to try and meet basic human needs -- status, respect, affection -- with material ends. And no time more so than at Christmas, when Santa rides in on a Norelco razor. It's a kind of joint conspiracy that few of us dare break out of, even though we all understand at some level that it's not working. What if you don't give your kids a "proper Christmas"?
But the second you do break out of it -- the second your family becomes one of those that exchanges used books at Christmas, or decides to follow St. Francis' Yule tradition of wandering the park and throwing seed so that the birds too could celebrate, or makes it an annual custom to serve turkey dinner at the homeless shelter -- then you start sharing in the deep human secret that consumer society is set up to obscure: the things that please us most are almost always counterintuitive. We need to be out in the cold air, we need to think about others, we need to serve.
There are, of course, some who will say that a course like the one I'm describing here will damage the economy -- that anyone who proposes a different Yuletide is a "grinch." (This, by the way, is a major literary faux pas. Close reading -- even cursory reading, or even viewing the annual television special, will remind one that it was in fact the grinch himself who believed that Christmas came in a box. He turned out to be wrong, as the Whos of Whoville, those communists, made clear.) You could answer those people by saying, "Well, it won't all happen at once, and the economy will have time to adjust." Or you could answer by saying, "Maybe you're right. And maybe the economy isn't therefore quite as rational and as obvious as we would like to believe, if in fact it depends on a corrupted celebration of Jesus' birth to stagger on for another year."
The second answer appeals to me. We need a kiss to break our enchantment, and a kiss (a coupon for a kiss! Or a dozen!) is a perfectly fine gift to give for Christmas.
Bill McKibben, a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, is the author of The End of Nature, the first book for a general audience on climate change, and, more recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He serves on Grist's board of directors.
Are you brave enough to say no to a high-stress holiday?
By Bill McKibben
20 Nov 2007
http://www.grist.org/cgi-bin/printthis.pl?uri=/feature/2007/11/20/say-no/index.html
http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/11/20/say-no/?source=daily
The problem with Christmas is not the batteries. The problem isn't even really the stuff. The problem with Christmas is that no one much likes it anymore.
If you poll Americans this time of year, far more of them regard the approaching holidays with dread than anticipation. It has long since become too busy, too expensive, too centered around acquiring that which we do not need. In fact, it's the perfect crystallization of the American economy -- the American consumer experience squeezed into a manic week, a week that people find themselves hoping will soon end so that on Jan. 2 they can return to the mere routine hecticity of their lives.
From that central truth, a few propositions follow:
* Replacing regular stuff with green stuff isn't getting very close to the root of the problem. If for some reason you need to give someone a motorized spice rack, then a motorized spice rack with a more efficient motor is quite clearly better. But it's also quite clearly beside the point.
* Stuff itself is a problem less because of its environmental toll (though that is quite high) than because it's increasingly meaningless. Think of your friends. Are many of them lacking in stuff? Or is the first question that forms in their minds when a new gift arrives from under the tree: "Where am I going to put this?"
* But this pleasure gap allows for a concentrated opportunity to begin rethinking our economic life. If stuff isn't valuable anymore, what is? Time, clearly. A gift of time -- a coupon for a back rub, or a trip to the museum, or a dinner prepared someday in the future -- is a gift whose exchange rate is figured in a stronger currency (if you're an economics major, think euros vs. dollars). Or gifts can come embedded with time already spent: a jar of homemade jam, a stack of firewood in the back yard.
* Gifts can also be reconfigured to remove some of the hyperindividualism that marks our consumer society. Ask yourself what you'd rather receive: another thing, or a homemade card saying that, say, a cow had been purchased in your name and was now providing milk for a Tanzanian family that hadn't had milk before. (Note: this line of reasoning is probably especially strong for those of us who are Christians, and recall that the occasion we're celebrating is the birth of a man who said to give all that we had to the poor.)
* Since Christmas has long been in the business of baptizing consumption, it's a good place to start eroding consumption's allure. Newfound pleasures from a simpler holiday -- some silence, some companionship -- suddenly start to seem attractive. Maybe that attraction will remain with us yea even unto February.
That would be good, because our environmental problem, at root, isn't that the stuff we're buying uses too much energy or too much plastic, or that its paint has lead in it, or that it's been shipped too far. Our environmental problem is that we consume way too much because we've agreed to try and meet basic human needs -- status, respect, affection -- with material ends. And no time more so than at Christmas, when Santa rides in on a Norelco razor. It's a kind of joint conspiracy that few of us dare break out of, even though we all understand at some level that it's not working. What if you don't give your kids a "proper Christmas"?
But the second you do break out of it -- the second your family becomes one of those that exchanges used books at Christmas, or decides to follow St. Francis' Yule tradition of wandering the park and throwing seed so that the birds too could celebrate, or makes it an annual custom to serve turkey dinner at the homeless shelter -- then you start sharing in the deep human secret that consumer society is set up to obscure: the things that please us most are almost always counterintuitive. We need to be out in the cold air, we need to think about others, we need to serve.
There are, of course, some who will say that a course like the one I'm describing here will damage the economy -- that anyone who proposes a different Yuletide is a "grinch." (This, by the way, is a major literary faux pas. Close reading -- even cursory reading, or even viewing the annual television special, will remind one that it was in fact the grinch himself who believed that Christmas came in a box. He turned out to be wrong, as the Whos of Whoville, those communists, made clear.) You could answer those people by saying, "Well, it won't all happen at once, and the economy will have time to adjust." Or you could answer by saying, "Maybe you're right. And maybe the economy isn't therefore quite as rational and as obvious as we would like to believe, if in fact it depends on a corrupted celebration of Jesus' birth to stagger on for another year."
The second answer appeals to me. We need a kiss to break our enchantment, and a kiss (a coupon for a kiss! Or a dozen!) is a perfectly fine gift to give for Christmas.
Bill McKibben, a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, is the author of The End of Nature, the first book for a general audience on climate change, and, more recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He serves on Grist's board of directors.
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