Greening X-mas

A great little article came to my attention via Christine Granados, who spotted a photo of my friend Donna Hoffman in last Sunday's New York Times (style section). Sure enough, Donna or "Ms. Demeanor", as she sometimes referred to herself when we were on the air doing KO.OP Radio stuff together in Austin, was interviewed for the article about folks who are divesting from the hyper-commercialism of christmas.

My mom gave me a cute little live tree last December--a Norfolk Island Pine--and I've actually kept it alive for a whole year now. It stays indoors year-round and I'll probably hang the same 3-4 holiday ornaments on it as I did last December. One christmas, my live-in boyfriend made a blatant commentary on how I threw my clothes on chairs instead of hanging them up or putting them away. I arrived home from work one evening to find a short stubby tree brandishing miniature holiday lights. Upon closer inspection, I found that James had taken one of my garment-laden chairs and merely thrown a string of lights around that. Hah, I got back at him by decorating a free discarded (y'know how some folks'll throw out their x-mas trees BEFORE the 25th) tree with his dirty tube socks.

One of my best xmas-es was the year, 1996 or so--when I took off for Mexico City on x-mas eve, but flaked out at the border. I returned to Austin, but told no one that I was back in the states. I wrote, meditated, strung fresh popcorn for the birds to eat, attended a jazz/poetry x-mas eve concert, and got drunk at the x-mas night karaoke at the Hole in the Wall down on the drag. I guess, for me, the better approach is to relax standards, be willing to embark on new (and different) traditions of celebration, and to detach from expectations.

Anyway, here's the link to that NY Times article: "JOLLY AND GREEN, WITH AN AGENDA."

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And, if you do feel like shopping this weekend, I recommend stopping by this year's version of:

the Annual Alternative Holiday Bazaar,
Sat./Sun., December 1st and 2nd,
at the First Jefferson Unitarian Church, 1959 Sandy Lane,
in East Fort Worth.

Homemade edibles, handcrafted gifts, and fair trade imports are all available--for reasonable prices, I might add.