bignoseduglyguy

A thought for the season

As we head into the frenzied commercial and gastronomic orgy that Christmas has become, Jo Clarkson over at Ethical Matters has come up with some timely tips for an ethical Christmas, ten of which I have reproduced below:

• Reclaim the meaning of Christmas! Make a gesture of goodwill (donate money or do some volunteer work).
• Send e-Christmas cards or buy recycled ones.
• Resolve to cut down on Christmas spending this year – set a budget.
• Buy a Christmas tree from a sustainable source.
• Avoid shopping malls – support local commerce.
• Buy only fair trade and organic goods.
• Make your own decorations and reuse them each year.
• Avoid excess packaging on food and gifts.
• Recycle your Christmas waste.
• Tidy up Christmas using non-toxic cleaning products.

For our own part, we try and do at least some of the following:

• Agree with relatives to not swap loads of gifts but make donations instead.
• Defuse kiddie stress by spreading the gift opening over the whole of Christmas Day rather than just a manic couple of hours.
• Send last year's unused 'as new' gifts to children in Brazilian flavelas or African orphanages.
• Buy just enough food rather than pile the trolley with treats and nik-naks.
• Spend a TV-less evening mending last year's homemade decorations and dressing the tree
• Recycle gift wrapping/boxes/bags - even if it is just within the family if you're worried about what folks will think!
• Share our Christmas Day meal with someone who might otherwise spend the day alone.

If you have read the above and think that it is all nonsense or are even asking yourself 'what's in it for me?', here's a thing. A few years back, we became involved in helping a woman and her stepchildren, who had fled war, murder and oppression in Africa, find their feet in a confusing and sometimes scary new environment. A variety of folks helped them get a place to live, decorate that place and stock it with essential homewares and the like. Just before Christmas, we bought our new friend and her children a few small gifts, knowing that her meagre minimum wage pay as a cleaner (xenophobes please note: she refused to claim benefit) couldn't stretch to such things. On Christmas Day, there was a knock at the door and there was our friend and her family, who had simply walked over to hand us a gift and say 'Thank You' in her broken but improving English. It was a cheap, colourful floor mat - the kind that is sold in an 'Everything for £1' shop - wrapped, I suspect, in someone else's cast off wrapping paper but, never in my whole life have I been so humbled by such a pure and selfless act. Whilst we sadly don't see her ever smiling face very often, I will never forget that gift.

So, my thought for the season? Do something, just one thing, more than simply buying stuff with the swipe of a card. Volunteer a hour of your time, knock on the door of a lonely neighbour or, hardest of all, decide to make small changes to your life that will make big changes to other's lives...and then actually make those changes and stick with them.

Posted by bignoseduglyguy at December 7, 2003 01:28 PM | TrackBack