Green Christmas in the time of climate change
The Hindu
Here are two initiatives that hang a sustainability message on the branches of Yuletide trees, besides the customary baubles
There was a time when “Green Christmas” just denoted Yule celebrations free of crippling snowfall — and nothing else. With that meaning, the term works only in places with extreme winters that suffer a “whiteout”. It is ludicrously out of place in the tropics. Absolutely in Chennai. When that genius of a satirist-comedian Stan Freberg employed it to take a playful jab at how Christmas is fused with Commerce to make an inseparable pair of ‘Cs’, his immediate American audience guffawed, getting the joke straightaway. The ‘green’ in Freberg’s “Green Christmas” (released in 1958) was a smart synecdoche for business, denoting the green printing ink that goes into the American currency. Before moving on to the subject at hand, sample a couple of hilarious Freberg lines that are a spin-off from a timeless carol: “Deck the hall with advertising/ Fa la la la la la la la la/ ’Tis the time for merchandising/ Fa la la la la la la la la”. The way Freberg used Green Christmas rings truer, with “Christmas shopping” having entered lexicons under every sky.
Climate change has added another connotation to “Green Christmas”, one that is truly global cutting across climes. Unlike Freberg’s, this Green Christmas is not something to laugh about. And it comes with with an all-season, all-region relevance. Festivals make a fertile ground for sustainability messaging. After a tour of “green golus” during the Navarathri season, it is just the season for green Christmas trees. There is an almost universal appeal to Christmas trees and its branches would be right pegs to hang a sustainability message, besides of course all those glittering baubles. Here are notes from two initiatives that did just that.