My Green Family. ramblings of one family's journey to green living

It’s hard to believe Christmas and the holidays are upon us. My shopping is done, presents wrapped and baking completed and already half gone (is it a bad thing if your Christmas baking is gone before Christmas?) I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas traditions and how many of our traditions have changed since leaving home, getting married and having kids.

One of the biggest traditions in our house was always the food. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and turnip (my mom makes amazing Finnish turnip, the recipe has been passed down for generations). This year we’re staying at home so I’ll be in charge of our big Christmas meal. And due to Tristan’s diet restrictions and picky eating this tradition will be a bit different. I’ll be doing chicken breast instead of a turkey, cause I know Tristan will eat it. Dressing will be made from gluten free bread, potatos made with rice milk and not cream and no turnip since I don’t know the recipe yet and I really haven’t developed the palate for turnip yet.

Gifts are another tradition we’ve changed a bit. We don’t go crazy with presents for the kids, see my Story of Stuff post for an explanation. But we did get them both toys they can both play with, an advantage of having two so close in age! We also put a bit more thought into Tristan’s gift as we wanted to make sure he would play with it appropriately and not just use it to line up with his other toys, but really play with it. And for Odum my gift to him is more thoughtful and not just some random store bought thing, I’ll fill you in later.

We’re also going to incorporate some sort of activity into our Christmas day and not just make it about pigging out. Since we love hockey we’d eventually like to do a big family pond hockey game. But until the kids can skate we’ll settle for a nice walk on the trail near our house and maybe a toboggan ride.

There are many more ways we could have greened our Christmas this year. We need to get LED lights for our tree, we should have used an alternative for wrapping paper, we could have bought the kids toys that were eco-friendly, I could make a vegan Christmas dinner. But, (I know I know everyone always has an excuse) with three different therapies going on for Tristan and having therapy everyday of the week, not to mention making sure Maya doesn’t get lost in the shuffle or feel neglected, its been difficult to take the time and make better, greener more eco-conscience decisions about Christmas. We do the best we can with what we have right? Next year we’ll do better, we have to!

So from our family to yours have a happy holiday and may all your Christmases be…green!

Andrea, Odum, Tristan and Maya