Dreaming of a green Christmas

AS the festive season approaches, accompanied by the merry jingle of tills, you can join the annual consumer stampede to fill your shopping bags with expensive, mass-produced gifts, decorations and novelties.

You can also choose to opt out this year and to find a greener, more budget friendly approach to celebrating Christmas. For a start, here are some great, earth-friendly gift ideas, including suggestions from the World Wildlife Fund.

How about giving relatives scrapbooks of photographs, letters and documents, chronicling your family’s history. Another great family gift idea is a scrap book filled with Aunt Edna’s fruit cake, Gran’s killer koeksusters, Uncle George’s dynamite ginger beer and other legendary family recipes.

A gift that won’t hurt your pockets is your time. If you are skilled in a sport or musical instrument, give children some of your time to coach them. Hand out coupons offering services such as babysitting, home-cooked meals or a monthly lunch date.

Fill stockings with homemade goodies or fair-trade items like tea, coffee or chocolate. Do your shopping at church bazaars, craft markets, flea markets, informal traditional craft stalls, fair-trade shops, garage and car boot sales and charity thrift shops.

If you are good at DIY and have some time to spare, home made toys, clothing, crafts, home furnishings and other items would make really meaningful gifts.

Think out the Christmas box when it comes to buying imaginative gifts for younger family members. Those gung-ho outdoor teens would love an assortment of survival kit goodies like a torch, compass, rope, pup tent, binoculars and bird and other nature guides. They would also benefit from vouchers for outdoor adventures or visits to animal sanctuaries or nature reserves.

For the younger children, how about a dressing up box, complete with second hand clothes, fabric drapes, costume jewellery and plenty of bling. Little ones would also love a gardening kit, with a small trowel, fork, apron and plenty of interesting seeds and bulbs.

The World Wildlife Fund points out that there are many wonderful initiatives that support the great work of conservation. Membership card to various green organisations will not only support this work but will encourage your loved ones to be out and about in the natural world. The Botanical Society (BotSoc) card allows unrestricted access to the 10 incredible national botanical gardens around the country. A SANParks Wild Card provides free access to all national parks and many provincial nature reserves. You could also treat a family to a nature-based experience, a night away in a nature reserve or a visit to some special green beauty spot.

Think green when it comes to wrapping your gifts, too. Instead of buying expensive Christmas gift wrap, make your own. Use brown paper or recycled newspaper, upgraded into gift wrap with pretty bows, ribbons, glitter, beads and other inexpensive bling. Gifts can also be wrapped in pretty dish towels, retro crocheted doilies, eye-catching fabric scraps, hessian sacks and reusable bags.

Finally, recycle your junk to make your own Christmas decorations. Assemble pots of paint, glitter, glue, shiny, coloured paper and other handcraft items then involve your children or grandchildren in this project. Go green with your table decorations. Fill clear glass containers with pretty flowers and foliage from your garden. Plant out succulents in small pots or glasses to make lovely organic place decorations and little gifts for your dinner guests to take home. And, instead of buying an expensive artificial tree why not shop for an indigenous sapling. South Africa’s yellowwood and wild gardenia species make particularly good Christmas trees. You can plant your tree in your garden after the festive season to give the urban wildlife in your area a late Christmas gift.

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