Have a wonderful Cwtch Christmas that is greener, simpler, less debt, less stress and more fun.
Celebrations
Christmas is a time of celebration, eating, drinking, and receiving gifts. But it can also be a time of high stress about all the organising of food and finding time for everything, shopping in the crowds, finding the right gift for everyone, who is going to take Uncle Dewi this year, the financial strain as it might mean borrowing money which can put the rest of the year under financial pressure.
A simpler Christmas that is still full of cwtch moments
Borrow less, make more, buy and eat less food and consider our Christmas’s environmental impact. Making Christmas more relaxed and celebrating more takes some mindful changes.
According to The Sun, in 2017 – BRITS spent more than £19 billion on presents, ate 308 million slices of turkey – and pulled 154 million crackers, a study has found. Over the festive period, we will also travel 5.6 billion miles to visit almost 257 million friends and relatives.
154 million crackers!! Wow, that is a lot of plastic toy rubbish and a mountain of cardboard packing and paper.
Gifts
Consider buying loved ones an experience or activity as opposed to more stuff.
It would seem on average, we buy 22 gifts for 9 people, spending collectively about 20 billion. How many of these gifts are wanted, needed or used? When receiving an unwanted gift, I know people who save it to give to someone else the next year—that’s recycling!
Consider getting second-hand quality items, especially for small children. Well-made, good-quality toys that are sturdy and last. Just clean and sterilise them.
Consider making some homemade gifts; they are always well received. You don’t have to be able to sew or knit. There are plenty of other simple ways. For instance, add a label to a glass storage jar filled with a DIY sewing repair kit or with travel-sized toiletries. Depends on the person’s interests. If you can sew, the options are endless; if you can do basic woodwork or bake, you also have plenty of options.
Make a pact with some of those nine people you usually buy for to stop exchanging gifts. So much we buy each other is not used or, frankly, just not needed; it’s just more stuff, more clutter and more storage to find. So take some of the stress out of buying Christmas gifts; it’s a greener option and less stressful.
Children get so much at Christmas, maybe consider just one or two fewer presents and plan to do more with them instead.
Christmas Decorations
We are all convinced by advertising that this year’s Christmas colour theme is different from last year’s. From icy blue to maybe copper, then maybe pink or purple! How else are they going to get you to buy more Christmas decorations? Keep the theme more traditional, like red and green or natural with neutral tones that will last year after year. Try not to see Christmas decorating as the latest fashion statement. Lots of natural green foliage, pine cones, dried orange peel, cinnamon sticks, and candles for a more authentic natural cwtch Christmas.
Christmas Wrapping
Buying someone an experience instead of a gift usually involves just an envelope, so not much paper and dyes from printing. Christmas wrapping that is recycled plain craft paper by the roll that has not been printed on (so no dyes). Make the packaging more decorative with natural items like a sprig of evergreen from the garden and natural twine or a homemade tag.
Super easy stencil, free brown paper from Amazon
I have seen people collect large amounts of that brown paper that comes with many Amazon deliveries. Smooth it out and do a simple stencil all over it. Making a simple stencil, a potato cut into a tree shape, or a kitchen sponge cut into a simple form will also work well. Buy some cheap acrylic paint, colour your choice; a darker green looks good. You have almost free unique recycled wrapping paper and a fun project for you and the children.
Furoshiki or Bojagi
Furoshiki, the traditional Japanese art of wrapping gifts in fabric, goes back a long time. It’s artistic, beautifully tied, totally eco-friendly, and can be used repeatedly. This art of wrapping gifts in fabric is called Furoshiki. Bojagi is from Korea. Where to start so that it doesn’t cost much? Charity shops (always good to support charity) have many scarves, not the woolly winter-type ones; I’m talking about the silky-type ones, usually square. Or look out for napkins or old linen going cheap at the charity shop. The size of the fabric square will vary depending on the size of your gift.
If you can sew, cut any upcycled fabric to any size and then neaten the edges. The only requirement is that it is square, with the most common sizes being 45 x 45 centimetres (17 x 17 inches) and 70 x 70 centimetres (28 x 28 inches). But it can be any size square you wish. Then, after Christmas, fold the fabric squares away, ready to use year after year.
In 2006, the Japanese Minister of the Environment, Yuriko Koike, promoted furoshiki cloth wrapping to increase environmental awareness and reduce waste. The contemporary use of furoshiki spread. Today, people around the world are using this environmentally-friendly way to wrap gifts.
Christmas hats – a greener option
One hundred fifty-five million or more Christmas hats are thrown away each year after being worn briefly or not at all. Buy or DIY reusable ones to use each year. Made from cloth, you can buy from sites like Etsy, Folksy and Not on the High Street ready-made, or you could make your own to use each year. They will stay on your head better than the usual tissue paper ones.
Christmas crackers – there are three greener options
A) Crackers made from all recycled cardboard and paper. They come flat-packed (less packaging) but are quick and easy to assemble, and you add your little gift. Something useful and individual, something you know the person will use, cutting down on all those awful plastic things no one wants that end up in a landfill near you—154 million in 2017.
B) Buy or DIY reusable fabric crackers and reuse them year after year; buy the snaps online separately. To buy handmade fabric Christmas crackers, visit sites like Etsy and Folksy, Not on the High Street, ready-made for you. You can easily make your own if you can sew. So you will have them year after year, add those little personal gifts and order those snaps and print some jokes.
Tom Smith
Tom Smith invented the Christmas Cracker some 170 years ago. The Tom Smith factory is based in South Wales and produces crackers for every budget, including special crackers for the royal family.
Advent Calendar
Buy a greener advent calendar made from wood or fabric etc. Use year after year. Some have places to put little gifts in, while others simply depict the countdown to Christmas.
Food At Christmas
Quite frankly, most people eat way too much, and we all know a lot of food goes to waste. So eliminate a couple of items off your shopping list. Do you need all those large tins of chocolates, biscuits and cakes? Maybe donate a couple of those items to the food bank at your local supermarket this Christmas. On the other hand, does the turkey need to be quite that large? Only you know the questions you need to ask to make your Christmas food less wasteful.
Set aside time
Stay calm and enjoy the cwtch moments of decorating the tree and your house and sitting down with your favourite tipple in front of the fire. Savour those cwtch moments of wrapping up gifts, making gift tags, making Christmas decorations, or writing your shopping list while watching a Christmas film. Enjoy the build-up to Christmas and savour this wonderful time of year with loved ones.
Avoid the pressure
Avoid the pressure from adverts trying to convince us we need to overindulge in every way; otherwise, we think we must be such a big Scrooge. Don’t be tempted to keep up with the Joneses either 🙂
Christmas Tree
Have you ever thought about what happens to your Christmas tree once Christmas is over?
Nothing says cwtch Christmas more than our tree lit up and beautifully decorated. Unfortunately, over 8 million Christmas trees each year, most end up in landfills.
There are several ways you can extend the life of your tree, avoiding landfills and making the whole process more eco-friendly.
1) Take a look at Recycle Now or your local authority website. They might be running such a scheme. They take your tree and turn them into chippings for mulch, for local parks and public spaces.
2) Chop up your Christmas tree, so it fits into your garden recycling bin. Along with thousands of others will end up as rich compost, nourishing our parks and public spaces.
3) Home to the little creatures in your garden. Remove the large branches and cut the truck into equal lengths. Gather the branches and logs, laying them all in one direction, and bind them together with twine, not too tight. Now leave the bundle in a quiet corner of your garden. The spaces between the branches make a perfect hideaway for little creatures.
4) Check the internet for charities and Christmas tree collection services. Volunteers will collect your tree for a donation, helping to raise money for charity. It is a voluntary donation, but the suggested fee is anything from £10 to £15; being more generous would be most welcomed. It is for charity, after all. You are putting your tree to good use.
5) I just came across a photo of Brockswood Animal Sanctuary on Twitter using the Christmas trees for feeding their goats; we all know they love to eat anything. There might be sanctuaries in your area.
6) It is possible to hire a real Christmas tree. It’s convenient, delivered and collected, then replanted. When the tree is about ten years old, it retires and is left in the ground permanently.
This made me think about artificial Christmas trees
Generally, artificial Christmas trees are made from plastic, PVC and metal, with the added problem of long-distance shipping, mostly coming from China. However, it isn’t just the manufacturing and miles that racks up their carbon footprint. Artificial Christmas trees are not recyclable. Eventually, they end up in landfills, going nowhere fast.
If you are going to get an artificial Christmas tree, consider buying the best quality you can find and plan to keep it for 20 years. If you look after it and store it well, this should not be a problem. One thing to consider about these artificial trees is that they don’t have that wonderful pine smell reminiscent of Christmas.
