Are we sending the right message to our children?
For most people in Canada, Christmas isn't a religious time of year (for some it is). Its just a week to enjoy spending time and money with friends and family and of course indulging in some good food and drink. Children of families fortunate enough to have money are showered with gifts while others are forced to dream and crave to have the lives (and presents) of those more fortunate unless of course there parents are kind (silly) enough to take out a loan for such gifts. In order to show neighbors our Christmas spirit: windows, doors, trees (inside and out), roofs, and front lawns are decorated with plastic ornaments and bright colorful lights for all to see 24 hours a day. Many people leave there lights on for weeks, even months. But is this the right message to be teaching our children this Christmas?
Even though we live in a world where climate disasters are a weekly occurrence and everyday we are pounded with news about how our government is failing to meet emissions standards, refusing to sign environmental agreements to reduce emissions, and ways you can help to reduce your personal environmental impact, yet we, at this time of year, ignore all these issues, leaving it to government to handle this pending disaster. But why? What lesson is this teaching our children? How will it effect there judgment on similar issues in the future?
Children learn what they live. If they grow up in a wasteful, thoughtless societal or family environment that has a leave it to government mentality, this will echo in the way they live there lives as young adults and then parents of there own children. By teaching our children that they must take responsibility and sacrifice small things to make the world a better place it will ingrain ideas and beliefs that will help promote environmentally friendly actions and decisions in the future. Instilling them with proper views of the world will help create a more educated population in the future.
A few questions to ask yourself at Christmas time:
Why in an era of climate change do we need:
- Billions of non-recyclable plastic ornaments made with cheap labor in developing countries all over our yards and houses (why not natural home made ornaments that involve kids in making things instead of watching Christmas cartoons and eating chocolate all day). Local natural crafts and ornaments are available in farmers markets and craft stores across the country
- Hundreds of billions of lights, lining every nook and cranny of our lives 24 hours a day for a whole month? We seemed to have forgotten that every light has a consequence attached to it, depending on where you live and what source of power you use.
- If, like my community, your dependent on coal, your complicit in the destructive and should be illegal practice of mountain top removal to get coal. One of the many effects of this process is destruction of the local water supply in rural villages via runoff, forcing thousands of people out of there homes and off there land. Not to mention the poisonings and deaths of children in these areas.
- If its nuclear, its the same thing but you get radioactive particles in the rivers and lakes near mines that supply water to many families, normally (in canada) this takes place on native lands, one such proposed mine is in northern Ontario where they have also done weapons testing without the native communities knowledge.
- Billions of dollars in expensive presents/toys that come with an unimaginable amount of packaging and waste, while children in developing or poor communities suffer the consequences of our greed.
- Dangerous pesticide filled food that has to travel thousands of miles from cheap international sources? We have a struggling family farm industry in Canada, yet we import more then we can consume, forcing family farms out of business. Buy local, buy organic. Invest in both your local economy and in farmers that grow food properly and naturally without the use of pesticides. Also, its helpful to buy fresh foods from local markets instead of buying packaged foods from national and international supermarket chains.
- Millions of Christmas trees. Why in the world does every house in Canada and the US require a mature tree to be cut down and placed in there living room? Wouldn't these trees serve a better use elsewhere? Couldn't the land these trees are grown on be used for a much better purpose? Like food for all the people who are starving through this time of year (ever here in the west let alone other parts of the world) or left alone to help remove some CO2 from the air.
- Wrapping paper, why is it necessary to repackage something thats already been packaged? If you must, why not us the cartoon section of your newspaper which many people already get, or just put a home made ribbon on the box that the item already comes in. To me this really doesn't make any god damn sense.
Christmas is touted as a time of giving, but as far as I can tell all we do in the west is take. We take from developing countries to provide the christmas cheer we believe we need. We take resources, labor, products, poisonous food, all because its cheaper or more readily available. But what we don't understand is that its not cheaper, someone is paying the costs for all these things, it just isn't you or me. Its the people who are already underprivileged, who make it through this time of year with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the things we enjoy as conveniences.
We need to start making better choices not just at christmas but all year round. For ourselves, for our children and for the children who have yet to have a christmas or never will. Instead of buying your children hundreds of dollars in gifts and teaching them that christmas is about bright lights, wasting, receiving gifts and eating as much chocolate as you can get your hands on, why not teach them that christmas is about conserving (giving back to the earth), charity (giving to those most in need), healthy living and generally enjoying time spent with friends and family. Buy gifts for them to give to others (like homeless and underprivileged families in the first and third world), take time to make christmas ornaments with your children from home waste, as well as naturally occurring and local products.
This isn't to say that your child doesn't deserve a gift at christmas, far from it, its just that they don't need the cornucopia of toys and gadgets that appear under the tree every christmas season. A single gift should be more then enough for any child, use your remaining budget to show your child that sharing with those less fortunate is more important any gift they could pick out for themselves.
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