Signs of the season: harlequin ducks joining the mixed flock in front of the house, increased traffic from the Anna's hummingbirds at our kitchen window feeder, chickadees flitting amongst the trees and shrubs on the block, fresh snow on the Olympic Mountains...and holiday displays in all the stores.
I find the "Holiday Season" to be very simple and incredibly complicated at the same time. Simple, because what's going on here, whatever the name or trimmings, is a simple celebration that here in the northern hemisphere the days that have been getting shorter and darker will start to get longer and lighter again. Simple because here in the milder maritime Pacific Northwest, there is an almost instant visible response to the increasing light from the natural world--within just a couple weeks of winter solstice, there will be bulbs peeking up somewhere, ambitious primroses or camellias blooming in the garden, ornamental plums fringed with fragile pale blossoms. All these plants with origins in colder climates find the maritime winter to be equivalent to the early spring in their DNA.
But then we monkeys come along and complicate things. On a social level, in our deeply divided country it is now a matter of some consideration whether it is more appropriate to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." Personally, I much prefer the latter, more inclusive phrase, although I know that it has just become code for Merry Christmas. Since my family celebrates the winter solstice as a religious holiday, and we have close Jewish friends, I am maybe a bit more sensitive to this issue than most, but it really does bother me that people of any faith would try to claim ownership over this time of year with one single holiday instead of sharing good wishes in the real spirit of the season. Celebrations surrounding the winter solstice are some of the oldest recorded, long before Christianity. Alas, there seem to be many of my countryfolk who don't allow themselves to be troubled by historical fact when they are being carried on waves of fanaticism.
The other driving force here, though, is commercialism. My older daughter and I went in search of some last-minute costume pieces three days before Halloween this year, and found the costume and candy displays already being shoved aside for Holiday (read: Christmas, since neither Yule nor Chanukah, contrary to popular belief, are gift-giving holidays on the order that secular Christmas has become) decorations. Local stations are already playing Holiday (again, read Christmas, with the possible exception of Adam Sandler's Chanukah Song) music. It won't even be Thanksgiving here for another week and a half! But more rides on Holiday shopping than any tradition's religious observance.
For one thing, those who watch economic health are always anxious to see how much money is spent by consumers this time of year. Some predict this year will be the same as last year, which is lower than the year before, which for some is troublesome. Far more troublesome, I think, is that something that started as a religious tradition is now something that a large part of our economy relies upon to be successful in any given year.
Often overlooked by the mainstream in all this is the vast amounts of environmental degradation and waste created by the "traditional" (in quotes because the idea of Christmas as a Santa-driven consumer orgy only dates back about 80 years or so) celebration of Christmas. Creating and shipping merchandise from far points of the globe to stores in the United States creates a stream of impacts for each individual item, beginning with the extraction of the natural resources used to make it and ending with its disposal. Many if not most items purchased as gifts come with gross amounts of overpackaging that can't be (or simply isn't) recycled. Add to that the tradition of wrapping gifts in an additional layer of paper and plastic ribbon and you've added another layer of waste to the picture. And then there are the meaningless gifts given out of a sense of guilt, that by themselves generate huge amounts of waste. Call me unpatriotic, but if the economic downturn leads to less of this environmentally destructive nonsense during the holiday season, that is really something to celebrate.
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