I tripped over when talking with the author about my favorite charity, Heifer International. A Mindful Christmas: How to Create a Meaningful, Peaceful Holiday by Barbara Elizabeth Kilikevicius is part guide book and part cheerleader for having a sane Christmas season with the moments of the kindness and love expressed in Capote’s Thanksgiving story. The book starts with two overarching questions–what are my intentions for the holiday season and what can I do without. With these two answers in mind, the first task is to think about what you and your family truly want from this holiday season. The premise of the book is that we all crave less craziness and, especially this year, less money spent. That’s a bandwagon I’m happy to jump onto (remember, books make terrific reasonably priced gifts).
Ms. Kilikevicius includes a calendar action plan that I loved. It covers November, December and January with week by week tasks. I read it last week, so I’m just learning about her suggestions for November, but they are so doable I don’t feel weeks behind. Throughout the action plan and elsewhere in the book, the author reiterates that we don’t have to do everything. When I read this admonition for the fourth or fifth time, I actually started to believe it and think about paring down to what was essential for this Christmas.
I especially enjoyed the chapters on celebrating advent before Christmas and then the twelve nights of Christmas after the holiday. It moves the focus from solely Christmas Day to a meaningful time before the holiday and a reflective time afterward. The book describes preparing an advent wreath (I have a permanent one that I can bring out every year) and provides suggestions for family time each Sunday before Christmas and then on Christmas Day. I’m going to try incorporating her thoughts on the twelve nights after Christmas to enhance a reflective time for the family as the hoop-la ends and everything is packed away for another year.
The author discusses various ways to keep focused on the meaning of Christmas rather than the commercialization of Christmas. In the chapter on children Ms. Kilikevicius stresses protecting the spirit of Christmas. She suggests not taking the kids to stores crammed with eye candy, keeping them away from the television with commercial after commercial telling them what they must have, finding ways for family time, and giving children crafts and cards to make.
For decorating, the book describes an efficient way for hanging lights, decorating the tree, creating gift wrap, etc, all with the thought that some years a sting of lights and a couple of candles in a relaxed home are better than a crazed home with beautiful decorations. Because always remember, some years you can’t do it all.
Tags: book review, recommended reading
Claire
Kim
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December 8, 2008 at 10:35 am
John
The following is an article that I wrote for a local real estate newsletter…
I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas
copyright by K. John Lee
Several years ago, I had the dubious honor of serving as my condo association’s board president. I recall my first Christmas as president, when the trash chute of our seven-story building backed up to the 6th floor. The combination of additional holiday trash and the trash company’s day off created a huge log jamb. Next year, I thought I would prepare better by leaving a message on the bulletin board a few days before Christmas. It read something like this, “Please refrain from discarding all of your holiday trash into the trash chute until December 27th.” Despite my request, the trash chute still backed up. In fact, I believe that it even reached the 6th floor again.
So how is this for a big discovery: During the December holidays, most households generate a lot of trash! At my home, we celebrate Christmas. With two children, there is an abundance of wrapping paper along with boxes, ribbons, etc. At one point, it is my duty to bring in the heavy re-enforcements: a big construction-grade trash bag. Of course, the bag is filled by the end of the day.
I jokingly refer to my monthly jaunt to the club warehouse (let’s call it “Tossed-Co”) as my trip to buy “landfill.” In all seriousness, I do not need a consumer researcher to tell me that many shoppers at Tossed-Co end up using more paper towels, because in the back of their minds, they know that there are 11 other rolls in the pantry! Between, toilet paper, paper towels, napkins and tissue, I am convinced that my family consumes twice the pulp products that my childhood family used (i.e. pre-Tossed-Co.)
It is estimated that we, Americans, use around 25% of the world’s fossil fuels while comprising less than 5% of the world’s population. I would not be surprised if our market share and use of paper products is just as skewed.
So where am I going with this? I hope for everyone’s sake – and I mean “everyone” — as in my generation, future generations, Americans, Chinese, Indians, Iraqis, middle income, rich people, Republicans, Democrats, etc. – that this green movement is for real!
It is possible that $4 gasoline is the cold splash, wake-up call that has been overdue for decades.
Maybe if we use less fossil fuels, gift wrap, toilet paper and stuff in general, we will be just fine? Our noses and backsides will be clean, we will get to Grandmother’s house (as in over the river and through the woods) in tact with clean lungs. Maybe we can still fill our bellies (just enough) with good food and fill our hearts with love and laughter while practicing conservation. In the end, our holidays will be…well…HAPPY!
Please excuse me for my Andy Rooney type pontification. I had originally planned on providing a list of things that we can do to have a greener holiday. But I do not have all the answers, and as a car driving, house-building, stuff-buying consumer, I may be part of the problem instead of the solution. But I am going to think about it this year. We all have different priorities, needs, commute distances and appetites, and to standardize rules of conservation might be unfairly presumptuous. So perhaps I can leave you with this…let’s take a time-out during these crazy economic and ecological times to think about conservation. While we may not share the same faith and celebrate the holidays in the same way, we do share this one planet, and most likely it was given to us by the same Creator.
So Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and best wishes for a prosperous New Year!
December 8, 2008 at 11:28 am
kankankim
We have a niece, Cindy, who has helped the family have a greener holiday. We give our gifts in holiday bags that we reuse year after year, I think we’re on our fourth or fifth year of recycling the same gift bags. She saves and reuses boxes from products purchased at those big box stores so when we see our present is in a cereal box, we know we aren’t getting Frosted Flakes, but the surprise inside. Plus, rather than buy us a present, she ususally makes something, one year she gave me a plant that took me years to kill. We always have two bags during the present unwrapping, one for recycling and one for trash, each year the trash bag is getting smaller. There are lots of ways to reduce the landfill contributions during the holidays.