Merry (environmentally unfriendly) Christmas!

Over the Christmas holiday’s period, I couldn’t help but notice the frenzy of consumption surrounding Christmas. I am found of Christmas for its festive, warm and giving atmosphere but it seems to me that it is nowadays more characterized by collective buying, consuming and wasting.  Christmas has become a materialistic orgy where conforming to social expectations means over-consuming. US theologians Richard Horsley and James Tracy found that Christmas is seen as demonstrating a ‘religion of consumer capitalism’ where religious authority has been given to secular behaviour (1). That time of the year and its intensified consumption can be seen as a perfect illustration of capitalism’s unsustainability. Indeed, Christmas comes at a high environmental price, that geographer Raymond Bryant even qualifies of “world’s greatest annual environmental disaster” (2). Christmas is the heart of capitalism, giving rhythm to production and consumption, boosting profit and making our economic system increasingly dependent on this festive period. In the UK for instance, one day of Christmas waste includes: more than a billion Christmas cards delivered; 52 square miles of wrapping paper; 125,000 tons of plastic packaging; almost 5 million of trees thrown away; 40% of the festive food wasted (while shops sell 16 million turkeys) (3). Christmas accounts for 5.5% of annual household carbon dioxide emissions when it amounts to less than 1% of the year (4). A study has also found that if unwanted gifts were not bought in the first place, the carbon footprint of Christmas shopping would be reduced by 80 kg CO2 emissions per person (5). The festive period can be seen as a sign of the absurdity of our capitalist system and of his threat to the environment. 

But making Christmas green might turn out to be more difficult than we think.

Before the industrial revolution, Christmas was more about handmade gifts that were indicative of the bond between the giver and the receiver. Now, Christmas gifts are often impersonal commodities that are turned into gifts through psychological marketing tricks such as gift-wrapping and Santa Claus (4). A research from academics at the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (University of Wollongong) has found that gifting is so paramount in shaping social relations and bounds in our individualistic world that even ‘green consumers’ are often driven by consumerism at that time of the year and see newly purchased commercial goods as the most suitable gifts (5).

It seems like it is time to stop associating showing love with buying stuff and Christmas with overconsumption if we wish to save the planet. Christmas should stop being about over-consumption and focus instead on its festive, joyful and loving side. Dr Gary Haq, from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI-Y) and coordinator of the Climate Talk project (that raises awareness of climate change issues), said that “with a bit of thought and planning, we can limit our impact and still have a good Christmas but one which is both kinder to the planet and to our pocket” (6). Haq’s research team at SEI-Y calculated that three days of Christmas festivities could result in as much as 650 kg of CO2 emissions per person but that we could reduced it by up to 60% with some changes in food, travel, lighting and shopping (6). For a low-carbon Christmas they advice: buying local and organic food, composting food (low waste), having a vegetarian Christmas; reducing distance travelled, car sharing or using environmentally friendly modes of transport; using less extravagant display of lights and turning it off at night; not sending Christmas cards or recycling them, not buying unwanted Christmas gifts, buying quality for presents not quantity and/or giving alternative gifts (such as charity or non-material gifts). 

This Christmas, I have started this slow revolution and made my first small step by making my first creative handmade Christmas gifts!