Christmas is coming!

Cultural festivals, such as Christmas, are undoubtedly enjoyable and an important time for families and friends to relax together. Many have important religious significance. On the other hand, such events are often defined by excess and waste...lights, fireworks, over-packaging, excessive spending, over-eating and embarrassing self indulgence.

Christmas is a great time of year for people to enjoy celebrating and spending time together. For most people it is probably one of their most favourite times of year, being able to spend valuable time with family and friends, being able to enjoy festive foods and treat loved ones.
Despite Christmas being a fantastic time of year, it is very unsustainable. Year after year, 2 million tonnes of waste is created every Christmas. This includes wrapping paper, cards, food, Christmas trees, bottles and cans.

Christmas lights make the season feel much more festive and special. Some people feel it is not only important to have lights on their Christmas trees but feel the need to decorate their houses from top to bottom in all sorts of lights. As nice as it is to drive by these houses where hours of time have been spent to make them look as eye catching as possible, it is extremely unsustainable. All year people focus on keeping their electricity bills to a minimum due to the expense and for some people to cut down on pollution, yet as soon as it hits Christmas, the whole ‘energy saving’ scheme is thrown out the window and Christmas lights are kept on for hours on end, even when nobody is in the house.

I personally think that this time of year, a lot of people forget about being sustainable and use the season to let down their hair and put all their worries behind them. Even I find I am more unsustainable at this time of year, leaving the Christmas tree lights on for long periods of time just because it looks pretty and feels cosy. I also find myself over-packaging presents and not able to eat all I’ve put on my plate... my mother feeds me well at Christmas.

In a changed world, that was more sustainable, I think Christmas would be very hard and less enjoyable. I believe this because it is the Christmas lights, the amount of food we eat and the unwrapping of presents that make Christmas, Christmas. If we were to be more sustainable, presents wouldn’t be wrapped up, all Christmas trees would be fake, lights would have to be kept to a minimum, possibly allowing lights on Christmas trees but not on houses and lights should only be turned on in the evening and turned off before going to bed and so on. This would completely destroy the whole festivity of Christmas. As important as it is to be sustainable, for a lot of people being sustainable at Christmas isn’t possible. Christmas time is where people celebrate the birth of Christ and for those with children, bring them up believing in Santa Clause, neither celebrations would be possible if the cooking of vast amounts of food and the wrapping up of presents present’s were cut to a minimum. Christmas is the one time of year I look forward to more than anything, just like many other people and I feel people should be conscious about how sustainable they are being but I don’t think everyone should be that extreme it ruins their Christmas!

References
http://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/environment/sustain/christmas.htm