The holidays can be tough for the eco-minded anti-consumers among us.  That doesn’t mean they have to be miserable.  Here are some suggestions for taking joy in the season, and still holding to your values.

Tired of the spending?  The gifting frenzy?  The stress?  Maybe this is the year to blend a few radical improvements into your holiday season.  Anyone can do it, whether you are hard core radical homemakers like us, a dual income family seeking ways to de-stress the season, or simply knee-deep in one of those down-on-your-luck periods.  Even if you don’t want to grow all your own food,  make your own lard face creams or nurture along a kombucha farm on your kitchen counter, there are still ways you can blend a little radical homemaking into your holiday season to feel better, enjoy yourself more, come through without debt, help the planet, and restore sanity to the last few weeks of December.  Here are twelve radical homemaking tips that have worked in our home to enable our family holidays to be happy:

1. Murder Santa.  In our family, we went along with the Santa thing for our first few years of parenthood.  It was an automatic reflex.  But it didn’t take long before I grew resentful.  It was tiring carrying on the ruse that everything happened by magic, and that there was no work involved to make Christmas morning happen. Laying down the facts about Santa Claus was the single greatest move we took to de-stress the holiday.  Instead of crying in despair, one daughter wept with relief that she didn’t have to try to believe in something that she seriously doubted in her heart.  The other one jumped for joy at the chance to help with the work.  Knowing no fat guy was going to cause made-in-China crap to magically appear, our daughters’ Christmas spirit went into over-drive.  They modeled tiny clay figures to put in our stockings, stuffed affectionate notes in the toes, needle felted little sculptures, and made drawings to present as gifts.
2. Get off the mailing lists.  It is amazing how those beautiful catalogs that show up in the mailbox can start to dictate your holidays: suggesting things you should want, what will make your family happy, what you should eat, how you should be spending your money and time to create the perfect holiday.  Getting off those lists helps to reduce the holiday waste stream.  Even better, it removes the power of suggestion from defining your Christmas plans and expectations.  To start the process, you can register your preferences with the Direct Mail Marketing Association (this must be done every three years).  That will be of some help.  But I found calling each company that mails a catalog was also necessary.  If you do place an order someplace, be sure to state that you do not wish to be on their mailing lists.
3. Lose the packaging. Stockings, in my mind, are a good reminder about sensible packaging.  Clean socks, reusable shopping bags, dish towels and scrap fabric conceal holiday surprises far better than tape, paper and ribbons…with a lot less work.  We’ve taken frugal pride in the creative colors and forms that peek out from under our tree on Christmas morning.
4. Embrace the dark.  Wendell Berry once wrote “To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark.” While we do string lights on the tree in our living room, and we gather like the ancient Norseman to seek comfort and solace from the fire, no festive lights are strung outside our house during the holidays.  The Pagan root of the holidays centers around the solstice, marked by the shortest day of the year, followed by the gradual return of sunlight. Living a life tied to the seasons, where we grow much of our own food, these dark days represent something important. Nothing grows. The livestock do not fatten.  Bees huddle together in the center of the hive. The chickens stop laying eggs.  The garden is blanketed in snow.  When nothing grows, there is rest: No weeds to pull, no fences to move, nothing to herd.  It is a time to maintain, to hold still, to rest deeply.  It is death for the sake of future renewal.  We don’t fight the darkness.  We drink it in.
5. Make time for the spirit.  We mark the Solstice on December 21st, and we go to church on Christmas eve.  On the Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year, we gather as a family, write down our wishes and hopes for the coming months, tie them with raffia to a log, and burn it in the fire.  As we stand around the hearth, we hold hands and tell each person one thing that we love about them.  We use words to express our love on this night.  No presents. It is a simple gift to each of us, with no cost, no stress, no planetary damage, and long-lasting impact.  In addition, we’ve learned that it helps our bodies and souls to carve out daily time for the spirit over the holidays.  It can be as simple as stopping to watch the sunrises and sunsets, stealing away for a quiet moment to meditate and pray, or pausing throughout the day to notice the way the slanted sunlight this time of the year illuminates the world around us differently.
6. Plan for sweets and drinks.  During the holidays, we are lured by a barrage of sugary treats at every turn, but dietary restrictions are a reality for many of us. Our family has learned that daily doses of a Christmas cookie here and a chocolate Santa there has a cumulative effect that wears heavily on our bodies, even more than a single full-out extravagant dessert.  We resist (or try to resist) the endless temptations by planning a sumptuous holiday dinner wherein we reward our virtuous discipline with a truly indulgent dessert.
7. Don’t burn out in the kitchen.  Not every gathering needs to be celebrated with an elaborate feast.   After-Christmas parties are popular in our rural hamlet, where family and friends simply bring leftovers to each other’s homes, and we help to clean out everybody’s refrigerators.  We re-heat the bisque I prepared on Christmas day, lay out the remainder of the Christmas pudding, slice up the leftover cheeses and pair them with some apples from our winter storage.  Friends bring along their turkey and ham leftovers, their plates of re-warmed roasted vegetables, their remaining mashed potatoes…whatever is on hand.  The conviviality is more important than the meal.  We’ve also adopted traditions of celebrating some special days throughout the season with intentionally humble foods: soup and eggnog on the solstice.  Bone broth and salad greens for lunch on Christmas eve, simple muffins and coffee for Christmas breakfast.
8. Ease up on the clean up.  Like all parents, we try to keep up with the laundry and the vacuuming.  We try to get the kids to pick up after themselves.  But we’ve learned that a  home is a living eco-system inhabited by deeply imperfect souls.  A happy home never looks like those perfect pictures in the magazines.  If we ran around trying to make the house sparkle every time we expected company over the holiday season, we would run ourselves ragged.  Part of the joy of the holidays is extending hospitality.  But hospitality comes from the heart, not from polished sideboards.  A house doesn’t have to look perfect when guests arrive.  A mug of tea and amiable chatter around a messy kitchen table is just as delightful and renewing as a formal meal in a pristine dining room.
9. Bring back Boxing Day.  While not a mainstream American custom, we’ve found Boxing Day, December 26, a tradition where servants and the poor would have received hand-me-down gifts from the wealthy, can be an especially helpful tactic for coping with modern holiday madness.  Today, Boxing Day in the commonwealth nations has devolved into yet another shopping spree, but we use it in our family as a time to winnow down our excess stuff.  We go through our closets and engage in ruthless purging, packing up the coats we’ve outgrown, the gifts that won’t get used, the surplus toys, and move them along to charity collections and thrift stores, so that someone else can enjoy them.  It helps to make our home feel less cluttered while we are spending more time indoors, and it helps others to curb their spending and consumption.
10. Make time to get outside and play.  Sunlight is in short supply during the holidays, so when it shines, we’ve learned to push aside the lethargy that glues us to the hearth and get outdoors with the kids to run around, go sledding, play with the dogs, or simply take a walk.  The exercise feels good on our faces, gives any exposed skin a little dose of Vitamin D, and helps our bodies to digest all those rich foods.  The activity helps to increase our energy levels, lifts the spirits, and reminds all of us that the holidays are about more than gifts.  They are about making time for fun, and for each other.
11. Humble gifts are fine.  We don’t do credit card debt, and we don’t like to contribute to consumption mania.  So while the kids do get a few new things (mostly craft supplies), most of our gifts are simple — maybe some homemade chocolates, or a piece of cardboard cut into a Christmas tree and decorated with beads, buttons and scrap yarn for an ornament.  I used to feel guilty when someone handed us an expensive gift and we responded with a cardboard tree ornament or a chocolate truffle. But, as Coco Chanel said, “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”  I’ve concluded that those cardboard tree ornaments are the height of style.  And the chocolates are delicious.  Maybe next time, people who give expensive gifts will feel less obligated to spend so much money on us.  And that will be good for them, good for us, and good for the planet.
12. Enjoy yourself.  It doesn’t matter how much money is in the bank, how messy the house is, or who you share your time with.  The holidays do not define our lives.  They are a moment to rest, renew the spirit, and reconnect; enabling us to bring energy and vitality into the coming year.  Happy holidays!