Ok, the blog isn't primarily about green ways of celebrating holidays. The first set of thoughts are to help myself rationalize the balance between the need / want to be festive vs the end result of the amount of garbage that is generated in the process.

Here is a list of the activities I end up doing for each major holiday/ party

1. Party / Holiday Decorations (most of them I reuse year to year but I must say, the temptation to add new stuff is pretty high)
2. Flowers to deck up the place (I don't feel too bad about this, they're biodegradable)
3. All the gas spent on those shopping trips to get stuff all together.
4. Food/snacks for the guests I invite: here are the dilemmas
   1. I felt very happy meeting up with friends in a long time, especially over a meal and had a great time. All that effort was definitely worth it. Hey happiness is my birth right after all !!!!
   2. At the same time, these are folks who are the "haves": morally should I have re-directed my efforts at feeding people who needed it more? Or does it matter given that everyone needs a meal and even if I hadn't served food, my friends would have eaten at home, and I gave them a break from their cooking duties for that one meal?
   3. The above are the easier ones that I could put my conscience to rest. However, the sheer amount of "garbage" that is created by the paper plates/cups/spoons etc is something I end up feeling really bad about. My husband helped out a lot by sorting all of that so we recycled as much of that as possible but despite that, there was a lot that just went straight into the trash can.

This does eventually translate to green ways of partying I guess. Once I finish digging around for practical tips, I will make sure to post again. In the meanwhile if you know of cool ones, please leave in your comments.

Any ideas? Here are a few things I came across as food for thought. Especially with Christmas time around :-)

1. Just walk around your neighborhood mall and see the displays. Look beyond the nice/beautiful. Year after year of "new" stuff: it cant be the same every year, right? Where does all the old stuff go?

2. With the world becoming a smaller place, now extend that scene to all the new and upcoming "malls" all around the world. What would happen if the same habits are extended to the Indias and Chinas?

3. Folks buying Christmas gifts: How much of what we buy is really useful? We allow the kids to write to Santa asking for only 1 item each. And this is so the poor little ones aren't denied their imaginations of Santa. As to the adults, my husband and I have a rule in our house. No gift shall occupy space in the house, and require time to maintain. Hence all our gifts end up being spa coupons, tickets

 to shows etc. And we don't do gifts at Christmas, mostly for an anniversary or birthday. Having been raised outside of this gift-giving tradition helps immensely. I'm sure having grown up with it, must be a lot harder to challenge/shake off.

Now extend this "gift giving" to all the families with more dispensable incomes in the "developing" world, who also want to have a similar holiday season.

Imagine that !!! Imagine the resources used, the gas spent on holiday shopping, the sheer amount of "stuff" that gets bought, and all the trash from all the partying. Does great for the economy, but what happens in the end?

My husband has an interesting quip (this was for the US, but certainly applies to everyone): The US soon needs to have a 51st state called "landfill"

For a more deeper view into the end-to-end lifecycle of "stuff" watch: http://www.storyofstuff.com/