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    How the things we do at Christmas can make thingsbetter for us, our relationships, and the environment

    by Nigel

    HowtoHaveaGoodX

    mas

    A free e-book from

    1 | 237www.nigelsecostore.com

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    An introduction

    Contents1. Christmas

    2. Trees3. Feast

    4. Presents

    5. Stock

    6. The Walk

    7. Sing

    8. Play

    9. Resolutions

    The odd thing is, even in our varied modern 21st

    century culture, Christmas is the single most

    important date in the year. No other day comesclose. There are good reasons for that, only in all

    the madness, we sometimes forget what those

    reasons are.

    The weeks of ads for fragrances, chocolates and

    strange liqueurs dont make it any easier. So Ive

    decided to try and give you my version of what

    makes Christmas great: welcome to Nigels guide

    to How To Have A Good Xmas.

    This is my

    version ofwhat makesChristmas great.

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    The first thing to consider is what is Christmasfor? And why has it been such an important festivalfor so many centuries?

    Well, I think its because Christmas is a very oldway to give your self, your family and your friendsa new start.

    Let me explain. Firstly, for those who like facts, itwas the Emperor Constantine who first decidedback in 336 AD that Christmas should be onDecember 25. It was a pretty smart choice toschedule it four days after the much oldertradition of rebirth, the

    winter solistice, December21. That is the point in thecalendar at which, even in thedepths of the hardest winter,we start to hope again.

    1 ChristmasLastcenturyturnedChristmasintoafestivalof

    consumption,butwecanremaketraditionsforourtime

    Christmas cards. Try to sendrecycled Christmas cards(like these designer ones).Or your own, or send texts ore-cards instead. And recyclethem afterwards, of course.

    tip1

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    At its heart, Christmas is about rebirth andstarting anew.

    Its easy to forget that. We all know that Christmascomes with a lot of extra baggage that has nothing

    to with what we want out of it. For a start. How didit become so absurdly commercial?

    Did you know that the reason why FatherChristmas is always pictured in red and whitegoes back to a Coca Cola advertising campaignfrom 1931?

    This is a true story. At the time US advertisingregulations meant that you werent allowed todepict children in adverts, so instead the Atlantadrinks company decided that Santa Claus himselfwould be the figurehead for their drink. Up untilthen Father Christmas had come in all colours ofcostume and had been drawn in all shapes andsizes. Coca Cola dressed him in their brandcolours of red and white and thats how weve

    ended up thinking about him ever since.

    Just one example of how the last century turnedChristmas into a festival of consumption. Thiscentury, maybe we can turn it into something else.Something much better.

    This century,maybe we can

    turn Xmas intosomething else.

    Somethingmuch better.

    Before you start rushing around makingChristmas to-do lists heres a quick way ofreminding yourself what you think is greatabout Christmas. Ask yourselves the followingthree questions:

    TWhat was the best Christmas present you

    ever received?TWhat was the best Christmas meal you

    ever had?TWho is the person youd most like to see

    again this Christmas?

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    2 Trees

    Trees are a brilliant symbol of Christmas.

    Personally, I love the idea of bringing themindoors. Its quite a strange concept, though, isntit? For starters, its always such a messyoperation, trying to drag some Nordman Fir up thestairs and across the carpet of your living roomamong the flat screen TVs and the MP3 players.But its not just because its a kind of mad thing todo that I like it; bringing evergreens into the heartof our house is an act thats full of symbolism.

    We take the natural world indoors to payhomage to it. The evergreen is a hint of

    cycles that transcend the usual wheelof birth and death.

    Bringingatreeinsideismagical.Itconnectsustothe

    naturalworld

    A real tree is carbon neutral.

    Buy from a small-scalesustainable grower and/ormake sure the tree hasForest Stewardship Council(FSC) accreditation. Youcould also grow your own.2

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    When Prince Albert brought the Germanictradition of Christmas trees to Britain in 1841 heprobably didnt know it, but he was linking us backto that same ancient pre-Christian paganism Italked about in Chapter One. But its interesting

    that we reconnected with this paganism at a timewhen industrialisation was gaining speed. Iwonder if, instinctively, we understood that eventhen something was being lost that weneeded to win back.

    Humans have always been greedy so-and-sos. Weve always tended to pushour relationship to the natural world tothe limits.

    Once we were hunters. The theorygoes, we hunted down theanimals until there were notenough left to feed us. At thatpoint, around 12,000 yearsago, we moved to farming.

    We now know it was a caseof farm or starve. When webecame farmers, our lives firstbecame harder and shorter.Instead of travelling light in small,egalitarian bands, we formed static,

    Decorate a tree:its a nice way ofsaying thank youto trees in general.

    hierarchical societies. We had to worklonger hours to grow enough to eat. Insteadof spending a couple of hours a dayhunting, we now worked from sunrise tosunset.

    But farming formed the basis ofmodern civilisation and eventually we

    prospered. And as the size of theland we took for farming increased,

    trees disappeared, just as the wildgame had before. And just as we

    exhausted our ability to live offgame, that process we started12,000 years ago is now reaching its

    limit. Now we are running out of forest,and trees, we know are crucial to the

    carbon cycle.

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    3 Feast

    Theres a front garden near where I live. Threeyears ago the owner dug it up and plantedcabbages, onions, potatoes, carrots andcourgettes in it. Now, each time I see her, shecomplains that she can barely get her work donethere because everyone stops to chat. They passby the expensively planted gardens nearby to cooat her humble rows of onions. Instead of growingornamental shrubs plants, people have becomepassionate about growing food.

    Something remarkable has happened in the lastfew years. We have started growing our own foodagain. All over the country, people have dug uplawns and planted vegetables. Demand for

    allotments has never been higher. Channel 4sLandsharescheme has connected would-begrowers with neglected pieces of land. The Mayorof London launched aCapital Growth schemewhich plans to create 2012 new parcels of land forgrowing food on by 2012. This year Tim Smit of

    ItsgoodtoshareamealatChristmasanditsgoodto

    knowwhereitcomesfrom

    You can grow food evenif you dont have a biggarden have a look atthese patio planters andgrowing frames

    tip3

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    Have you ever eaten something youve grownfrom seed? If you have, youll know it reallyseem to make food taste better. Youll knowthe satisfaction you get from it. Why not pass

    that satisfaction on to someone else thisChristmas by giving them presents that willget them started. If you havent, maybe nextyear is going to be the year you do it.

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    the Eden Project created an event calledThe BigLunch. Around a million people sat down togetherin the UK and ate the results of the summerseasons growings. In London the artist ClarePatey held her second Feast on the Bridge,

    stopping traffic and filling the bridge with a giantcommunity dinner, cooked from food grown onparcels of land from all around the capital.

    Christmas revolves around a meal. We mightsometimes baulk at the excess of it, but theressomething fundamental about sitting downtogether and eating. And sharing a glass of organicwine, perhaps. It is the most human of activities.But this revival shows that we know that a meal ismore than just eating together. To know where ourfood is coming from and to take a hand in not onlypreparing it, but in teasing it from the land, isincreasingly becoming part of the feast.

    We cant all have gardens or allotments. In my flat,a window box is the best I can manage. But even if

    you cant grow it, its important, at least, to knowwhere your food is coming from. The fact werestarting to care again is one of the best ways wevefound of reconnecting with our reliance on thenatural world.

    Instead of growingornamental shrubs

    plants, peoplehave becomepassionate about

    growing food.

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    4 Presents

    In the 1920s, the French sociologist Marcel Mauswrote a book called The Gift. In it he suggestedthat there was something magical about a present.It contained something of the giver in it. Becauseof that, a gift creates a bond between the donorand the person who accepts it. It is these acts ofreciprocity that tie us together.

    Forty years earlier, another anthropologist FranzBoas had studied a Canadian tribe who lived onthe North West Coast, the Kwakiutl. The wealthyamong them gave away their gifts to show offtheir status. The more you gave, the biggercheese you were. These potlatch ceremonies

    were accompanied by elaborate and aggressiveboasts, belittling the person who received thegifts. Take this Gucci watch. It shows how brilliantI am, and what a dismal squirt you are! At onepoint, when the Kwakiutl started to trade withsettlers, things got out of hand. Huge piles of

    blankets werebought, given, andthen burned.

    At a wild guess, Idsay we all recognise these scenarios. Presentsthat show unconditional love. Presents that showconditional love. Presents that leave us feelingsmaller than we felt before we received them.Presents that are so bloody useless they gostraight to landfill.

    Our world is made of fragile networks. There arethe networks of natural ecology; bonds between us

    and our planet. There are also the networksbetween us as a species. The glue that joins us toour friends, our neighbours, our families. Thesesubtle but powerful bonds we form between themare based on reciprocity. We must chose our giftswith care.

    Christmasisaboutgivingpresents.

    And,hopefully,aboutreceivingthemtoo

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    Mauss theory of reciprocal giving was based onthe idea that you had to know the identity of theperson you were giving the gift to. When we leave abag of clothes out for Shelter, or sign a direct debitto a charity, we are giving, but we do not know who

    we are giving to. To give to charity is a good act,and we should all do it, but because we dont knowthe person who receives it, it does not create areciprocal network. It is a one-way transaction.

    I think theres a chance now to do more than justgive. One of the prize winners in our first GreenWeb Awards was Freecycle. Freegle groups likeFreecycle create networks of gifters.

    There are two things I think are brilliant about this:

    One, that those bloody useless presents dont haveto go into landfill.

    Two, that you can give something away to someoneyou dont know, but its not just a one-way

    transaction. In this case, the act of giving helpsgrow the reciprocal network.

    Which brings us to

    Heres an idea. This Christmas, give a presentto somebody you dont know. Look around youright now. Find something you havent used inyears. Search for your local greencycle orfreegle group on the internet. It takes less than

    a minute to add your item to the email list thatgoes out every time there are 25 or so items tobe given away. In a day or so, someone younever know will come to your door and collectthe item, and theyll almost certainly besmiling. Even if you just post it to them, youhave done something that strengthens thenetwork, drawing more people into this newcommunity whose excellent values tell us thatif we act together there is almost nothing thatneed be thrown away.

    Give something

    away it helpsgrow the reciprocal

    network.

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    5 Stock

    In his recent book Waste, the environmental activistTristram Stuart calculated how much food theworld wastes. We waste it in the fields, where wethrow away carrots that arent straight. We wastethe food we grow by feeding it to animals; if we ateless meat we would need to chop down less trees.We waste food by buying too much and throwing itaway. We waste food by being suckered into buy-one-get-one-free deals. We waste food by believingsell-by dates, rather than our own eyes and noses.

    Based on the quantity of food we throw away, Tristramthen did some more sums. What he discovered isamazing. What we throw away could more than feedthe one billion who go hungry every day. If we stoppedthrowing that much food away, we would also lower

    the carbon footprint of the food industry sosubstantially that it would bring total global emissionsback to the levels declared safe by climate scientists.If we wasted less we would need less farmland andwe could save the trees that cool our planet byabsorbing the CO2. Its really that simple.

    Howtouseleftoverstocreatesomethingreallygood

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    At some point in the days after Christmas peopleused to make stock with the carcass of the chickenor turkey. The house would fill with the delicioussmell of it. Real stock is a brilliant thing. It tastes athousand times better than anything that comes in

    a cube. Plus you know that when you make a goodstock you have wasted nothing.

    You can add most leftovers to a stock. You donthave to even have a turkey carcass. Heres a recipefor a good Christmas vegetable stock:

    If we stoppedthrowing so

    much food away,we could bring

    total globalemissions back

    to safe levels.

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    Take:TCarrot peelings and stalksTDiscarded broccoli stalksTBrussels sprout leavesTPotato peelingsT Sweet potato peelings(In fact, the leavings of just about everyvegetable youve prepared for Xmas dinnerapart from onion skins, which taste nasty)

    Add:T 1 chopped onionT 2 celery stalks if availableT Several black peppercornsT 1 bay leafT 12 a teaspoonful of thyme or parsley,

    depending on what you have left from themain mealTSalt

    Method1 Chop up the ingredients if necessary and placethem in a pan. Cover with water. Bring to the boiland simmer slowly for 30-40 minutes.

    2 Pass the liquid through a sieve. If you haveused gritty peelings, let the liquid settle beforesieving and discard a little liquid at the bottom ofthe pan. If you want to freeze it, the stock can bereduced by boiling it further.

    3 There you go. Now if you take about 1kg of theroast vegetables left over from your Christmasdinner, add that to 750ml of that stock, plussome thyme or rosemary and a squeeze oflemon juice youve got the makings of a deliciousBoxing Day soup. Boil them all together for

    another 30 minutes then blend or pass through asieve and add salt and pepper to taste. Servewith warm bread.

    A perfect way to warm yourself after youve come home from your winter walk

    Nigels Christmas Vegetable Stock

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    6 The Walk

    At Christmas there is television and sitting down;there are stuffy rooms.

    And then there is the antidote. At some pointsomebody suggests a walk. Walking is one of thevery best things about Christmas. Where I live, onBoxing Day, the seaside is full of promendaders,arm in arm or pushing buggies, children trying outtheir new bikes, suddenly happy to be in the airafter the cooped up stuffiness of Christmas,sucking down lungfuls of salt air, returned to thesimplicty of moving slowly through a landscape.

    Behind my town there are ancient chalk hills. Theytoo are full of groups of people, wrapped in scarvesand gloves, carrying flasks of brandy and coffee,

    struggling up steep inclines to reach the top.

    In mid December the days are short. There is littledaylight to walk in. We have to make the most of it.

    The truth is there is something incredibly primalabout moving through a landscape at your bodysown pace. Your foot connects with the earth witheach footfall. The slow rhythm connects yourheartbeat to the beat of the universe.

    In the distance you may see a church or a hilltop.Slowly, without you really thinking about it, youmove towards it. The shape of the land around youchanges. Its as if you are fashioning the landscapeby passing through it.

    Goforawalk.ItsoneofthebestthingsaboutChristmas

    Walking createsa pause to go

    back to thosethoughts we dont

    have time for.

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    Every walk is ashortcut to a part of

    ourselves we havelost contact with.

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    The act of slow travel is one that loosens the head.When Nietzsche said all truly great thoughts areconcieved while walking he said something we allknow to be true. Poets like Wordsworth composedtheir poems while walking through the open

    country; the composer Satie concieved his greatestworks on six-mile walks between Arceiul andParis, sometimes walking at night, pausing understreet lamps to note down his ideas.

    Every walk is potentially a shortcut to a placeweve forgotten about, a part of ourselves we havelost contact with. We fill the year full of consciousactivity, we work, we carry out our duties, we care

    for others. At Christmas we stop. By walking wecan use that pause to go back to those thoughtswe dont have time for in our busy life. As the NewYear approaches, we have much to think about.What do you want of the next 12 months? What willthey want from you?

    If you start a walk with a problem you may find that

    by the time you end it, you are at least a littlecloser to the solution than when you set out. In theopen air, worries that seemed to fill the room athome can change their proportions. Thats not tosay you have to start with an agenda. Quite oftenthe act of travel will find you one. Odd

    unacknowledged thoughts might start to surfacenow youve given them a broader horizen in whichto show themselves.

    And when youre walking you may pause to catch

    your breath. Half way up a hill you stop and areamazed by the view. Or maybe sit with your back tothe trunk of a winter tree and look up to see theshapes the naked branches make as the cloudsscud over them.

    Walking reconnects us with our neglected world. Itputs us back into nature. And in the same way itreconnects us with those thoughts we have not

    had time to dwell on.

    This year be inventive. The artist/musician/writer Bill Drummond says that whenever hegoes to a new town or city, he writes his nameon a map and then walks his name, or as closeas he can to it down unfamiliar streets. The

    artist Richard Long once did a circular walkacross Dartmoor, literally following the sun asit rose and set. You dont have to be recklessbut try and come up with a walk that you wontforget for a year.

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    7 SingWhysingingandmusicis

    goodforyouChristmas is one of the few times the British singtogether. (For the purposes of this chapter, weshall temporarily exempt the Welsh, who are lessshy about the idea than the rest of us.)

    Generally we sing together grudgingly, knowing

    only the first two lines of Rest Ye MerryGentlemen and mumbling the rest with all theenthusiasm of a schoolboy owing up to a brokenwindow. Which is kind of pathetic, really. But thetruth is in Britain we only admire public singingwhen at the football, or when other cultures aredoing it.

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    Singing is the most democratic of musicalactivities. It is something we can all do, whetherwere brilliant at it or not. To hell with SimonCowell. And when you are singing with a crowd ofothers, is a really freeing, uplifting thing. A kind of

    warmth spreads over you that has nothing to dowith the port you drank to loosen you up in thefirst place.

    The trick is to join in.

    On the topic of music, its interesting thatmusic has become the most virtualisedartform. Though a lot of MP3 players still leavea lot to be desired ecologically, you can noweasily give someone music without even havingto wrap it and send it.

    Why not email an old friend you havent seen ina while a Spotify playlist of five tracks youveheard this year which you loved?

    Of course you dont actually have to sing if youdont want to. In a way this isnt about singing atall. The point Im really trying to make is that mostof us hesitate far too long to do things collectively.We are worried of making fools of ourselves.

    The future means were going to have to stopworrying. Were all going to have to join in together.

    Altogether now

    As long as welive, there is neverenough singing.

    Martin Luther

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    If youare

    giving a battery-operated game for Christmas,why not consider giving somerechargable batteries with it.

    tip

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    8 Play

    Why not play some games that reconnect withreal people?

    Even the most curmudgeonly among us has to playat least one old fashioned board/card or partygame at Christmas. Those are the rules. Whether

    its the quiz from a cracker or one of those Cluedogames that go on for hours before you discoverthat Uncle Bill, under the influence of theAmontillado, has gone and put two rooms in thesecret envelope.

    After all these years do you really still care thatyour sister is so competitive that she beats you at

    everything? The important part of playing gamesis the willingness to make a fool out of yourselfand the best games end in laughter. It goeswithout saying that games are meant to bringpeople together.

    Christmasdoesnothaveto

    bebattery-operated

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    Try a different game this year:

    A treasure huntUse the whole house. Use the wholeneighbourhood. One clue leads to the next,taking you around the place. If there are kidsinvolved, drawings will do. The secret is to laythe clues backwards, from the final prize tothe first clue.

    Nigels Game of the YearA way to figure out what all those friends and relationshave been doing since last Christmas. On a piece ofpaper, write down two things youve done this year whichis least typical of you, or that people are least likely toguess you did. Then make up two lies about what youve

    done this year. Put them all in a hat. Each person readsone piece of paper and the others have to guess a) whothe writer is, and b) which of the four statements is true.Clever players may wish to impersonate others with theirtwo lies to put you off the scent.

    Sartorial BulldogAn outdoor game, unless you want to break thechina. One persons it. Whoevers it standsbetween two destinations. The rest of theplayers go to either destination. The personwhos it then says something like, Peoplewearing tartan, Christmas jumpers,

    corduroy or just, Clothes with zips. Anyonewho is wearing clothes in that category has torun to the opposite destination. Anyone caughtbecomes it. Last person wins.

    The best gamesend in laughter.

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    We want to change.

    Sometimes we fail. Each year we create these littlemarkers New Years Resolutions to aim forover the next twelve months.

    Often we dont get to the place we hope to be.There is a difference between what we say and do.

    The things we do often get in the way of the thingswe say were going to do. The sociologist, AnthonyGiddens in his book The Politics of Climate Changedescribes the phenomenon by which we motoraround in Four Wheel Drives one day, andcampaign for climate change legislation the next.He calls this Giddens Paradox. (Of course I exemptall the customers of Nigels Eco Store from this.

    We dont usually have Four Wheel Drives. Evenwhen we can afford them).

    Howwecanchangeourselvesandbepartofsomethingbigger

    9 Resolutions

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    Why do we find it so difficult to change?

    I have a theory about that. As with the singing, toooften we feel awkward if we are acting on our own

    Heres an interesting story. An American electricitycompany recently started sending out bills to someof its customers that showed three charts; onewas a customers own energy use, the next wastheir neighbourhoods energy use, and the thirdwas how much energy the most efficenthouseholds in the neighbourhood were using.

    An amazing thing happened. The people receiving

    these bills started consuming less electricity. Why?

    If youre cynical you might say that this is a kind ofinverse keeping up with the Joneses. They seehow much their neighbours are using and theywant to go one better by using less. Im not cynicalthough. I think this sort of scheme shows the bestthing about us as a species. We act better when

    we act together. The best thing about newtechnology is that it gives us so many ways inwhich we can do that.

    Interestingly modern neuroscience is beginning tosay that, far from just being possessors of a selfishgene, our brains naturally empathise with otherpeople. We share feelings. We copy others. We liketo be part of something.

    Lets start actingtogether. We haveso many ways to

    do it now, andtheres such agreat need for

    that to happen.

    Its a greatresolution we canall take.

    http://www.nigelsecostore.com/http://www.nigelsecostore.com/
  • 7/27/2019 How to have a good Christmas

    23/23

    PSifyouwanttofindsuggestionsforhowyoucanloweryou

    renergy

    footprint,wehaveafew.

    Happy Christmas andthanks so much for comingto Nigels Eco Store.Have a great new year

    How to Have a Good Xmas 6 23 | 23

    www.nigelsecostore.com

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