The Art of Frugal Hedonism by Annie Raser-Rowland & Adam Grubb

Author:Annie Raser-Rowland & Adam Grubb [Raser-Rowland, Annie & Grubb, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethics of Consumption, Home economics—Accounting, Quality of life
ISBN: 9780994392831
Publisher: Permaculture Principles P/L
Published: 2016-10-20T13:00:00+00:00

26. Reinvent Christmas

Your authors realise it only happens once a year, but we reckon that reinventing Christmas is useful because it is so emblematic: if Christmas can be improved via frugality, then anything can.

It’s been over ten years since Annie told everyone she knew that she didn’t want any Christmas presents and wouldn’t be giving any. She made an exception for her one remaining grandma, said granny being old enough to maybe not quite get it (and also old enough to have done a lot of frugal-time herself, enabling her to really appreciate small gifts like a box of Turkish delight). Those merry souls who choose to vanquish Christmas consumption mania often make a similar exception for children, but keep the presents humble in scale. Perhaps a stocking filled with small treasures: packets of glitter, a book, novel trinkets (curly straws, a magnifying glass, chocolate coins), or craft materials – perfect for allowing the grown-ups to relax all day while the stocking’s contents are explored and put to use.

Find the consumption grotesque, but would still like to give something? What about only giving non-material presents (like a voucher for a massage, a lesson of some kind, or an afternoon of professional housecleaning). We know one circle of friends who decided to each make a donation to a charity at Christmas instead of giving each other presents. If you want to keep it small and yet stay away from useless tokenistic stuff, why not put aside a selection of the year’s best homemade preserves and pickles to serve as gifts? People love pickles! Such treats also have the advantage of a long shelf life, meaning they create no sense of obligation to eat even more food over Christmas.

For many people, festive food is another area of consumption-induced strain, and The Perfect Christmas Meal becomes an exhausting marathon of shopping and preparation, leaving (usually) the woman of the house so busy getting a parade of dishes to the table that she barely gets to sit down and enjoy them. And this over-catering scarcely makes sense in an age and culture where most people feel like they eat too much on a regular basis.

In eras when daily fare was very humble and featured virtually no ‘treat’ foods, a feast was anticipated with legitimate glee, typically including more animal protein, and energy-dense luxuries like dried fruit and honey. But we live in an age where meat is left to spoil in thousands of refrigerators across the country daily, hamburgers and milkshakes are thrown away half consumed, and dried fruit is considered a virtuous alternative to snacking on cookies. This excess-on-top-of-excess can lead to yet more Christmassy stress, as attempts to resist over-indulging at a parade of festive season work bashes and family gatherings segue seamlessly into guilt and dismayed resolutions to get to the gym more often to work off the ‘holiday bulge’.

What’s the alternative? If you’re feeding people, you could focus on quality instead of quantity to avoid ending up with piles of excess food.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.