I'm dreaming of a green Christmas

Updated On: 20 December, 2009 08:56 AM IST | | Kate Nivison

Swap electric lights for candles, compost the organic Christmas decorations or recycle the old ones. get back to the basics

Swap electric lights for candles, compost the organic Christmas decorations or recycle the old ones. get back to the basics

Now that Christmas has become an almost universal holiday, it seems that the urge to decorate both private and public spaces in all kinds of extravagant ways has pretty much gone global too. It doesn't matter whether you're shovelling snow or picnicking beneath palm trees in the tropics. Come November, there will be people up ladders practising their 'Christmas du00e9cor' skills.

Up will go streamers of tinsel and fairy lights, glowing plastic Santas and all kinds of trees, from pines to palms, real or fake, along with baubles, trumpeting angels and twinkling stars. In China, whole towns are devoted entirely to the manufacture of sparkly seasonal bits and bobs. Fashions may change, but the trend everywhere is towards the bigger and brighter, with ever more stylistic, themed and 'designer' displays.

Of course, nobody likes a 'party pooper' or a Mr Scrooge muttering 'Humbug!', but with worries about global warming and general belt-tightening, perhaps this is the year to consider getting back to the basics of a simpler age.

It all started out modestly enough on a local scale, and well before Christmas appeared on the scene. In the cold north, the sun would do its worrying annual disappearing act, leaving the residents huddled together round the roaring fire in the communal hall under bearskins and reindeer hides.