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

by Nigel

How to Havea Good Xmas

A free e-book from

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An introduction

Contents1. Christmas2. Trees3. Feast4. Presents5. Stock6. The Walk7. Sing8. Play9. Resolutions

The odd thing is, even in our varied modern 21stcentury culture, Christmas is the single mostimportant date in the year. No other day comesclose. There are good reasons for that, only in allthe madness, we sometimes forget what thosereasons are.

The weeks of ads for fragrances, chocolates andstrange liqueurs don’t make it any easier. So I’vedecided to try and give you my version of whatmakes Christmas great: welcome to Nigel’s guideto How To Have A Good Xmas.

This is myversion of what makesChristmas great.

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

Well, I think it’s 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, thewinter solistice, December21. That is the point in thecalendar at which, even in thedepths of the hardest winter,we start to hope again. ƒ

1 ChristmasLast century turned Christmas into a festival of

consumption, but we can remake traditions for our time

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.

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At it’s heart, Christmas is about rebirth andstarting anew.

It’s easy to forget that. We all know that Christmascomes with a lot of extra baggage that has nothingto 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 weren’t 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 that’s how we’veended 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 here’s a quick way ofreminding yourself what you think is greatabout Christmas. Ask yourselves the followingthree questions:

TWhat was the best Christmas present youever received?

TWhat was the best Christmas meal youever had?

TWho is the person you’d most like to seeagain this Christmas?

2 Trees

Trees are a brilliant symbol of Christmas.

Personally, I love the idea of bringing themindoors. It’s quite a strange concept, though, isn’tit? For starters, it’s 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 it’s not just because it’s a kind of mad thing todo that I like it; bringing evergreens into the heartof our house is an act that’s full of symbolism.

We take the natural world indoors to payhomage to it. The evergreen is a hint ofcycles that transcend the usual wheelof birth and death. ƒ

Bringing a tree inside is magical. It connects us to the

natural world

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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tip

When Prince Albert brought the Germanictradition of Christmas trees to Britain in 1841 heprobably didn’t know it, but he was linking us backto that same ancient pre-Christian paganism Italked about in Chapter One. But it’s interestingthat 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. We’ve 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:it’s 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 weprospered. And as the size of theland we took for farming increased,trees disappeared, just as the wildgame had before. And just as weexhausted our ability to live offgame, that process we started

12,000 years ago is now reaching itslimit. Now we are running out of forest,and trees, we know are crucial to the

carbon cycle.

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3 Feast

There’s 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 forallotments has never been higher. Channel 4’sLandshare scheme has connected would-begrowers with neglected pieces of land. The Mayorof London launched a Capital Growth schemewhich plans to create 2012 new parcels of land forgrowing food on by 2012. This year Tim Smit of ƒ

It’s good to share a meal at Christmas and it’s good to

know where it comes from

You can grow food evenif you don’t have a biggarden have a look atthese patio planters andgrowing frames

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Have you ever eaten something you’ve grownfrom seed? If you have, you’ll know it reallyseem to make food taste better. You’ll knowthe satisfaction you get from it. Why not passthat satisfaction on to someone else thisChristmas by giving them presents that willget them started. If you haven’t, maybe nextyear is going to be the year you do it.

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the Eden Project created an event called The BigLunch. Around a million people sat down togetherin the UK and ate the results of the summerseason’s 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 there’ssomething 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 can’t all have gardens or allotments. In my flat,a window box is the best I can manage. But even ifyou can’t grow it, it’s important, at least, to knowwhere your food is coming from. The fact we’restarting to care again is one of the best ways we’vefound of reconnecting with our reliance on thenatural world.

Instead of growingornamental shrubs

plants, people have become

passionate aboutgrowing 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 ceremonieswere 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, I’dsay 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 usand 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. ƒ

Christmas is about giving presents.

And, hopefully, about receiving them too

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

I think there’s 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 don’t haveto go into landfill.

Two, that you can give something away to someoneyou don’t know, but it’s not just a one-waytransaction. In this case, the act of giving helpsgrow the reciprocal network.

Which brings us to…

Here’s an idea. This Christmas, give a presentto somebody you don’t know. Look around youright now. Find something you haven’t used inyears. Search for your local greencycle orfreegle group on the internet. It takes less thana 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 they’ll 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 somethingaway… it helps

grow the reciprocalnetwork.

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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 aren’t 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 lowerthe 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. It’s really that simple. ƒ

How to use leftovers to create something really good

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

You can add most leftovers to a stock. You don’thave to even have a turkey carcass. Here’s a recipefor a good Christmas vegetable stock: ƒ

If we stoppedthrowing so

much food away,we could bring

total globalemissions back

to safe levels.

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Take:T Carrot peelings and stalksTDiscarded broccoli stalksT Brussels sprout leavesT Potato peelingsT Sweet potato peelings(In fact, the leavings of just about everyvegetable you’ve 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 1⁄2 a teaspoonful of thyme or parsley,depending on what you have left from themain meal

TSalt

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 you’ve got the makings of a deliciousBoxing Day soup. Boil them all together foranother 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 you’ve come home from your winter walk…

Nigel’s 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 body’sown 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. It’s as if you are fashioning the landscapeby passing through it. ƒ

Go for a walk. It’s one of the best things about Christmas

Walking creates a pause to goback to those

thoughts we don’thave 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 opencountry; 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 placewe’ve 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 carefor others. At Christmas we stop. By walking wecan use that pause to go back to those thoughtswe don’t 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 thatby 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. That’s 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 you’ve given them a broader horizen in whichto show themselves.

And when you’re walking you may pause to catchyour 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 nothad 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. Theartist Richard Long once did a circular walkacross Dartmoor, literally following the sun asit rose and set. You don’t have to be recklessbut try and come up with a walk that you won’tforget for a year.

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7 SingWhy singing and music is

good for you

Christmas 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, knowingonly 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. ƒ

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Singing is the most democratic of musicalactivities. It is something we can all do, whetherwe’re 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 ofwarmth spreads over you that has nothing to dowith the port you drank to loosen you up in the first place.

The trick is to join in.

On the topic of music, it’s 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 haven’t seen ina while a Spotify playlist of five tracks you’veheard this year which you loved?

Of course you don’t actually have to sing if youdon’t want to. In a way this isn’t about singing atall. The point I’m 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 we’re going to have to stopworrying. We’re all going to have to join in together.

Altogether now…

“As long as welive, there is neverenough singing.”

Martin Luther

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

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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. Whetherit’s 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 ateverything? 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. ƒ

Christmas does not have to

be battery-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.

Nigel’s 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 you’ve done this year whichis least typical of you, or that people are least likely toguess you did. Then make up two lies about what you’vedone 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 person’s “it”. Whoever’s “it” standsbetween two destinations. The rest of theplayers go to either destination. The personwho’s “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 Year’s Resolutions – to aim forover the next twelve months.

Often we don’t 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 we’re 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 Gidden’s Paradox. (Of course I exemptall the customers of Nigel’s Eco Store from this.We don’t usually have Four Wheel Drives. Evenwhen we can afford them). ƒ

How we can change ourselves and be part of something bigger

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…

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

An amazing thing happened. The people receivingthese bills started consuming less electricity. Why?

If you’re 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. I’m not cynicalthough. I think this sort of scheme shows the bestthing about us as a species. We act better whenwe 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.

Let’s start actingtogether. We haveso many ways to

do it now, andthere’s such agreat need for

that to happen.It’s a great

resolution we canall take.

PS if you want to find suggestions

for how you can lower your energy

footprint, we have a few.

Happy Christmas andthanks so much for comingto Nigel’s Eco Store. Have a great new year

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