My mother and grandmother always appreciated that with both of them gone, more friends and family will be getting their share. only if you know a Norwegian, and divvied them up among loved ones. For several years I’ve also made large batches of krumkake, a wonderful dessert you can get in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests for shoppers looking to shrink their garbage footprints. The more stuff we produce, the more the dregs of our daily lives find their way far beyond our urban boundaries.Īware of this, I shop for gifts locally and buy with waste reduction in mind, two habits that the U.S. In the city we see overflowing trash bins and roadside litter, but those of us who wander in our mountains and deserts find indestructible plastic and food containers tangled in brush, miles away from the nearest convenience store or fast-food restaurant.Įven along some high-altitude trails in the San Gabriel Mountains, I’ve seen chaparral and pine groves that double as balloon graveyards, their branches ensnaring the inflated Mylar and latex that routinely escape suburban birthday parties. We’ve created a civilization bursting at the seams with stuff, and the holidays merely see the worst of it. That might be tolerable in a more conservation-minded society, but the typical American already produces nearly one ton of garbage per year. By one estimate, we generate more than 25% of our annual waste during the holidays. I respect that - no matter how intractable our trash problem has become.Īnd it is a monstrous problem, especially around Christmas. My wife puts a lot of thought into her gift-giving, and my children beam when they get something in the mail from their great-grandparents. So in the interest of domestic harmony, I try to keep the monologues about presents being just future trash - and the planes ferrying them across the country, the delivery trucks shuttling them to our doorsteps, the gas burned driving to mall parking lots, good God don’t get me started - to myself. My late Norwegian grandparents, who spent much of their childhood under Nazi occupation, appreciated this kind of conspicuous frugality, but to American ears, “Don’t get me anything” sounds like “I want a divorce.” This is why my instinctive “don’t get me anything” response won’t work when my wife, my mother-in-law and even my children ask what I want for Christmas. Like it or not, giving our friends and family stuff between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is one of the most important bonding rituals we have. Though I’d wager the answer is no, I’d also bet you do remember something: who gave you a present, and the love you felt because of it. Too harsh? Then ask yourself: Do you remember much of what you got last Christmas? And the gift itself, in most cases, future trash, given enough time. Every time I rip open a lovingly wrapped gift (and plenty of us will be doing a lot of that soon), one thing pops into my mind: trash.

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