A few things from the week

Posted by louisa on Friday 30 December 2011 in meta | 5 comments

One. Whenever we tell people we don’t celebrate Christmas, the first question is often “what do you do on the 25th?” – we don’t do anything special, we just treat it like a normal day. A few years ago, when the 25th fell mid-week for a few years, we worked – it was a good day for doing things to busy websites or the like. Last year, it was a Saturday so we had some equally unobservant friends around for pizza and to watch dumb movies – a common Saturday event.

This year it was a Sunday so after a lie-in and a lengthy Lily-dog walk, I cleaned out the chicken coop as I do every Sunday morning – it was so warm that I was fine out there in just a t-shirt, quite different compared to last year! – then hoovered (the new bale of wood shavings had ‘leaked’ as it was carried through the house), then spent the afternoon gaming. Just a normal Sunday really.

Two. I spent that afternoon – and most of the last week in fact – in the World of Warcraft. I’ve jokingly called it a “holiday in Azeroth” – it’s changed a lot since the last time I was there two years ago and I wanted to have a look around to see what’s new – but it’s actually been more of a holiday than I reckoned. It’s as absorbing/disruptive to normal life as being out of the country for a week! I do like that I can create a character that cares about nature and spends as much time looking for herbs, crafting things, cooking & fishing as she does killing things :)

Considering there is a lot of WoW which feels like chores, it really pushes my buttons and I can play it non-stop for hours and hours. I’ve been complying a list of ways it does that – along with ways that my other favourite video games do too – to see if I can transfer some lessons from them onto my real life — make my real life to-do list as fun as running around killing murlocs.

Three. While I was gaming on Sunday, John went for lunch with his family – as he does whenever they all gather together – and returned with a huge pile of leftovers for us, so we’ve been able to join in the “when will we finish all the turkey?” game even without celebrating Christmas ourselves ;) We’ve had turkey & ham leftovers each day since then, and I made a turkey & chorizo jambalaya (like the one mentioned on here) last night which was yum. John also brought home leftover meat from people’s plates for Lily-dog & the feline duo, and leftover veg & fruit (including a LOT of melon) went down to the chickens. Glad we could use it up rather than it all going in the bin.

Four. The chickens’ new roof is working well – and by the amount of digging that’s going on in that area, I think they’re enjoying having a new dry part. If anyone sailing about 700miles south-east of Invercargill in New Zealand (the antipode of West Yorkshire) spots some chickens, they’ll be mine – having dug right through the earth.

Five. I bought some forced hyacinth bulbs a couple of weeks ago as and aside from getting a bit leggy/too heavy for their own good, they’re pretty – and so fragrant – at the moment. I am regretting it a bit though – I prefer plants to cut flowers but while these are in soil, they’re essentially as disposable as flowers. I will plant them out in the garden, to see if they’ve got enough energy to grow again in the future (apparently hyacinths are more likely to grow again in future years than something like tulips), but I’m not holding my breath over them.

What have you been up to this last week? Had a mountain of turkey to get through too? Any tips for helping my hyacinths along?

Why I don’t celebrate Christmas

Posted by louisa on Friday 24 December 2010 in meta | 12 comments

I don’t celebrate Christmas. I don’t buy presents, give cards, eat turkey or see family. For the last few years, I’ve treated it like a normal work day, this year will be a normal Saturday. I think we’ll have pizza for tea and watch a film.

Not a special day for me

I was talking to some (teenage) kids at class about it a few weeks ago and they exclaimed “but it’s Christmas!”, as if it had some natural inherent specialness. I explained that I’m not a Christian and so I feel about Christmas how they might feel about, say, Eid or Hanukkah. It’s something that other people, with other beliefs, celebrate but I don’t.

Christmas was never been a really big deal in my (small) family – apart from a few times when I was very little, it was just the four of us and presents aside, it wasn’t that different from a normal Sunday (we didn’t even have turkey because one third of the family’s meat eaters – my brother – didn’t like it). As I grew into my teens, its specialness ebbed away even further – my dad had to drag us out of bed for lunch – and so when I left home for uni and beyond, I didn’t feel the need to create a big production of my own. For a couple of years, we (me, the ex and a friend) had an unusual-for-us roast dinner but did little else to celebrate (and it was lamb not turkey, and involved a whole lot of chilli). But pretty much since then … nothing.

Such pressure – and such waste

Probably because it’s never really meant that much to me, it was easy for me to leave it behind and now that I’m completely out of it, I find it hard to comprehend how much pressure some people put themselves under in the name of the season – not everyone, not by any means, but a lot of people. The pressure of finding the perfect present or affording an ever growing pile of more expensive presents, the pressure of cooking the perfect meal, the pressure of finding the perfect tree, the pressure of everyone getting along, the overall ongoing pressure to make this year better than it was last year and to make sure everyone has a good time… I’ve had a good number of people (adults rather than kids) tell me that they don’t enjoy Christmas at all, but it’s just something they feel they “have” to do, especially if they have kids. It riles me when people do things because they feel they “should” rather than actively want to do it.

And it’s not just that – the greenie/anti-consumerist in me is obviously outraged at the excess and waste too – the presents-for-presents-sake, the packaging, the food… Basically, it pushes a lot of my buttons.

Every day is special

I think some people think I’m just a Scrooge-ish, contrary bah-humbug type but I’m really not. I just don’t see why 25th Dec is any more worthy of celebration than 19th February or a random Thursday. I see friends & family when I want, we have nice meals when we want and I give presents to people when I see something I think that person would really like or need, rather than keeping it until the end of the year. I would rather enjoy the whole year than saving up all my festive juices for just a couple of days.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t celebrate Christmas, not in the slightest. I’ll admit that I can see why the old celebration was revived in the 19th century as it gave people something special to look forward to in the middle of winter and I could probably do with more events to look forward to in my calendar – but for me, right now, it’s not worth all the stress and waste.

Rhonda on Down to Earth recently talked about how her Christmases have evolved over the years with the coming and growing of children, and soon grandchildren. Perhaps we’ll be more interested when we start a (non-animal) family in a few years – but coming from a place of rejecting it all, I suspect we’ll pick and choose what bits we do more than most.

If you don’t also celebrate Christmas, I’d love to hear why.

Christmas, according to Agnes Jekyll

Posted by louisa on Thursday 23 December 2010 in meta | 0 comments

(1922! Imagine what she’d think of Christmas in the 21st century!)

Regifting – do you do it? how do you do it?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 23 September 2010 in anti-consumerism, frugal | 3 comments

The other day, a friend of mine, who wishes to remain anonymous for reasons that may become more apparent later, told me he had spent part of his weekend wrapping Christmas presents. I pulled a WTF face – wrapping Christmas presents? in September?!

He explained that whenever they have to go to the faff of getting the paper, tags, tape etc out to wrap one present, like a birthday present, they wrap a whole bunch of them at the same time to be more efficient. He added that they also have a cunning present recycling strategy.

Whenever the friend and his lady are given birthday/Christmas/random presents they don’t want, they stick a post-it note on it and add it to their to-give present box so it can be regifted in the future without any chance of it ending up back with the original giver.

As I’ve explained before on Recycle This, I’d much rather not get the gifts in the first place and unlike my super nice friend, I’d rather make things a bit awkward than accept the items because I’m uppity and mardy like that – but I think the post-its are a great, simple idea to avoid re-gifting embarrassment.

Do you regift? Or otherwise give gifts of things you already have around your home? Do you have any strategies to avoid giving them back to the giver?

If you’d never regift, why not? How would you feel if you were given something you suspected had been re-gifted? Would you say anything?