holiday shakedown

whew. it's over. i must say i am happy to be on the other side of the gift getting/giving/ buying part of the holiday season. this year was really confusing for me. pre-environmental freakout, i bought a bunch of crazy stuff for the kids (like a make your own superball kit) and sean (a heated back massager for the car. ?#@$?). post-freakout, i made homemade gift cards out of construction paper because i didn't want to buy the plastic ones. a few days before christmas, we met my parents at the mall and i felt like an alien watching everyone scramble to buy their last minute stuff. when the girls opened their gifts, there was such a strange mixture of decadent plastic stuff they'll quickly abandon and carefully selected used books they'll be reading for years. it sure is hard and awkward to change sometimes.

for me, the big thing i learned is that i don't want to do it like that again next year. i want to make my gifts next year, giving myself tons of time to get them done. i think i'll make a list of the things i want to give to each person and make them throughout the year, creating a stockpile of knitted hats and jewelry and bath salts and artwork instead of racing out to the mall in a final hour frenzy. it will be fun to see how different the holidays look and feel around here next year.

my friend gave me a cool book called "The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook" which has 77 suggestions for ways to go green. Number one is to Commit and number 2 is Change Slowly. the author says, "Changing an established way of life can take three to six months or more. Don't give up . . . in time, it gets easier and eventually becomes innate." so that's inspiring to me.

how were your holidays? i hope you had a wonderful season and are
getting ready for a fresh new year!

experiment: the gift that keeps on giving

Today Sadie had a birthday party. Last week, I would have run out to the toy store to buy a gift bag, tissue paper, a card and some random gift probably made out of plastic for a kid we don't know very well. Today I tried something new. Sadie's friend was having a dinosaur party, so I looked through our stuff to find something dinosaur-related. I found a big cool dinosaur encyclopedia in our book collection that we've never read, made a necklace out of beads Sadie got as a gift for her birthday and wrapped everything up in wrapping paper made from a brown paper bag. As the gift chooser, I felt much more connected and thoughtful about the process of giving than I usually do. It also felt great not to consume gas to go buy a bunch of stuff no one (neither us nor the birthday girl) really cares about. And then there's the meta gift of saving those resources for another day. I think I might actually start looking forward to birthday party "shopping", especially if it's in our playroom.

It was interesting to notice my thoughts and discomfort as I trolled through our stuff: "They're going to know it's used and be offended. This is rude. You're supposed to give people new things. You're supposed to impress people with the things you give them." And then to wrap the book up in that paper bag and give it anyway. The whole experience was so liberating! I've been such a good dutiful consumer, so well versed in the American way. So now I'm wondering what else is rattling around in that subconscious of mine. Guess I'll find out with each new step I take.

future days

I'm realizing that we are the generation that has to make the big consumption paradigm shift and teach these new practices to our kids. The world our children will live in 20, 30, 40 years from now is going to look very different than the one we all inhabit now. I keep trying to imagine what daily life will be like in the future, and I wonder if it will be more like it was in the Depression, back when everything people consumed was scarce and precious. That might not be such a bad thing.

This leads me to think about the expectations I'm setting for my kids with the holidays and gift giving. I don't want to set them up to expect more more more, knowing they need to practice being happy with less and grateful for what they already have. I'm not sure what that looks like yet. So we need to start making some new traditions around here. How are you approaching the holidays and gift giving this year? What are your favorite traditions that aren't about stuff?