We’re Dreaming of a Greener Christmas

The Climate Justice Niagara committee would like to wish everyone a very Green Christmas.  Below are some ideas to ensure our Christmas footprint is as small as possible. 

Now, please don’t cast us in the Grinch framework. Our suggestions are not intended to take the enjoyment and love out of the holiday season; instead, they may create some fun and stretch your imagination.   

We write this as the Season of Creation is just ending and hope that our understanding about caring for Christ’s beautiful world continues throughout all the seasons. Our ideas may also help keep your money in local businesses and out of the hands of big box store owners and home delivery services. 

So here are some thoughts to consider:   

GIFTS

• Don’t turn on your computers to order gifts; visit the shops in your neighbourhood. The savings of plastic and Styrofoam packaging will be enormous. It also keeps trucks and vans off the roads. 

• Those church bazaars are amazing places to find unique gifts that artistic people have produced. 

• Create a homemade gift or offer to give a service, such as: “cleaning out grandpa’s garage”. 

• Consider buying tickets for a show, a sporting event, or a meal out.  The gift lasts longer than Christmas Day and your kindness and love will be remembered later. 

• Buy fewer plastic items – choose wooden toys for young children. 

• Avoid items that need batteries.
• Buy gifts from PWRDF or an environmental charity.  

• Shop for gifts at thrift stores; or regift. 

• Organize a Secret Santa within a group/family. 

• Just buy less
  

FOOD 

• Shop for locally grown food or at least items grown in Canada. 

• Source meat from farms that let the animals live more healthy lives before becoming our food. 

• Bake goodies for friends. 

DECORATING 

• Wrap gifts in compostable paper e.g. colourful comic newspaper.  

• Material bags can be used year after year.  Or use bright tea towels or napkins to wrap your gifts and tie them with red wool rather than ribbon.  

• Use natural items for decorating. (Branches, pinecones, popcorn, cranberries) 

• Use last year’s cards to create little boxes or name tags. 

• Create your cards or send e-cards. 

• Use real napkins, not paper.  

THE TREE 

• A real tree, or a plastic one? Once a plastic tree is produced, even if it lasts 20 years or more, it will always be there.  When it stops gracing your living room for 4 weeks every year it will take up landfill space for maybe 50 years or more.   

• Could this be the year to cut down your tree; make it a family outing. 

•  In January see if a nearby conservation area or the Royal Botanical Garden can use your Christmas trees for fish barriers in lakes and wetlands.   

• Buy a smaller tree in a pot that can be planted in the spring.  Explore the idea of renting a tree that is later returned.  

• Avoid tinsel for decorating trees – it is impossible to remove every piece. 

• Use LED lights. 

Remember that at the end of Dr. Suess’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch understands what the people of Who-ville already knew. 

“Maybe Christmas, he thought, “doesn’t come from a store,  

Maybe Christmas…. perhaps…. Means a little bit more!” 

As Christians, this message may be obvious but sometimes forgotten.  

All that came to be was alive with His life, and that life was the light of all people.  The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never mastered it. John 1:4-5. 

     The Climate Justice Committee wishes you a very light-filled, green Christmas.