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A new kind of Christmas

A new kind of Christmas - how it all startedThis year I decided to redesign our Christmas more sustainably. It all started on the 31st of October. My three children, aged 3, 9 and 15 were looking forward to making-up as deadly and disgusting monsters and running around the neighborhood in search of terribly sweet and unhealthy candies. And somehow it dawned on me - I can't change the way our society works and I can't withdraw my children from this society either, I can't and I don't want to. However I would desperately love to shield them from all these "consume party", being it a "candy consume party" - also called Halloween, or a "toys and cheap stuff consume party" - also called Christmas. I would love to shield my children but I can't, so the only thing I am left with is ... to "be the change I want to see". I can't change the world in a second, but I will start to create new traditions, little islands, little seconds of true connection embedded in all these sweet frenzy and consumption. We will slowly go back to the roots of the traditions we have, after all, all those "consume parties" are at their source, festivities of connection - connection to our passed loved ones for Halloween and - connection to nature and the changing seasons for Christmas, Easter and others. Only later in our history, were those pagan festivities adopted and transformed first by religion and second by capitalism.Christmas - a time to connect with our deeper selves and our loved onesChristmas has always been one of my favorite times of the year. The days grow shorter and colder. The lack of light and warmth calls me to connect with my deeper self, to reflect on who I am and to reconnect with my closest friends and family. I seek warmth and light within me and my closest circles, as the warmth cannot be found on the outside anymore. I long for a comforting drink, for a cozy place to sit down and chat, for those beautiful Christmas lights popping out on every corner. For me Christmas is all this time of expectation, it is this warm and cozy place I build in my house and myself, surrounded by the cold outside and the darkness of the night. These last days have been especially meaningful, as I have had a lot of thoughts on our new Christmas - what to change, how to change and also how to prepare my family for it. I would like to share five aspects of this new Christmas with you.1. A new advent ceremony and a story about the power of intentionThe first Sunday, the first Advent - that's where Christmas really starts for me. Last week, when we were supposed to lit the first advent candle, we didn't have one as I wasn't sure how ecological and ethical candle production is and I didn't have time to dive into the topic. So instead of traditionally lighting our first candle, I spontaneously asked my husband and children to sit down in a circle and to hold hands with me. I then wished for a minute of silence. Do not be mistaken, as idyllic the rest of the story might sound, it wasn't that idyllic at all. The three-year-old one was hitting the nine-year-old one, the nine-year-old one was screaming, the fifteen-year-old one was tickling the nine-year-old one, the little one couldn't sit still and was jumping and tearing on our hands, all the kids were laughing one after the other and some of them were throwing stuff in the middle of the circle. It was very difficult for everyone to hold hands and to make silence for even ten seconds. But we all tried, and for a very brief moment, we even all tried at the same time. I know that in our memories, those ten beautiful seconds will grow bigger and bigger and that everything else that wasn't so important after all will be forgotten. So with the years passing, we will only remember this beautiful moment of silence and connection. I then made a wish for this Christmas season and everyone in our circle followed. I wished for no cheap plastic presents, my children wished for an advent calendar, my husband for something meaningful to do for others. To my big surprise, our three children then spontaneously co-created a new ritual - from now on, on every Advent Sunday we write all our names on little pieces of paper, we pick one of those names out of a winter hat and we do something nice for the person we have pulled out. There are no rules, except of course not buying stuff that is done in a non-ecological or in a non-socially-just way. At the end of the week, we have to guess who has drawn our name. 2. A family Christmas tree with a name and a story of hopeToday we will receive our family Filisur Christmas tree. It is a live tree in a pot, that will come to visit us every Christmas and will then return to its home in Filisur. It is our personal family tree, it will have a name, namely the name of a child we have lost this year and every year we will have the joy to see the tree grow bigger and brighter and we will remember again and again that the spirit of this beautiful child we lost will stay forever with us. On Sunday, we will decorate our lively and lovely Christmas tree, drinking mulled wine and apple punch, full of joy and melancholy, hearing "Schwiizer Goofe" "das wünschene i mir" and witnessing the beauty of a live Christmas tree being festively decorated without the pain to see it die and go at the end of the holiday season. We will carry our ornament box out of the cellar, filled with unique Christmas balls, each one standing for a year in which we bought that ball and for something important that happened in our lives at that time. 3. About going back to the roots and celebrating the longest night of the yearNext week, on the 22nd of December, we will celebrate the winter solstice with friends and family. In the woods of Zürich, we will all share a warm soup, mülled wine and a beautiful fire followed by a magical story about the longest night of the year, that our dearest friend who is also a professional storyteller will share with us. It is the first time in our lives that we will be celebrating this special day, the longest night of the year and the return of the light and life into our lives. I don't know how meaningful it will turn out to be, nor if it will rain, nor how difficult is it going to be to bring enough food and drinks for twenty people on a hill in the woods, nor how tired our children will be when wen need to walk back home in the dark through the woods - but I know for sure that our memory of it will be meaningful and that we will give birth to a new Christmas tradition, that we will hopefully repeat next year.4. How to make Christmas vegan but still keep a festive menuFor years, family members gather at our house for Christmas. So I have the joy and hard work of cooking a big and festive Christmas meal every year. This year, it will be a vegan meal. I haven't dare yet to share this with my family, as a good piece of meat has been a long tradition for us and most of my family isn't very much into the ecological and socially-just way of living. I am looking forward though to addressing the topic for the first time with them.I have designed a dinner in the sign of the "apple", a beautiful vegan meal with lots of swiss apples in it, together with others for the most seasonal and local ingredients: first, a mild carrot and apple anis soup, second a potato, parsnip and pumpkin gratin braised in apple cider followed by an apple and pear cinnamon crumble. 5. About giving sustainable Christmas presents and "time" as a giftI have finished all my Christmas shopping weeks ago, after shopping in a sustainable Christmas market in Zürich. Yesterday, I packed all of those beautiful sustainable, and socially just presents in different kinds of papers: old newspaper for my youngest son, that I will decorate with some colorful paint, reusable tissue present packages as well as recycled Christmas paper. There is a beautiful coffee, more than bio, more than fair and in recyclable capsules, that fits into Nespresso Coffee machines, that is waiting to be opened and tried, there is a little solar light shaped as a star, that is contributing to somebody else in the third-world receiving the same lamp, a personalized storybook, that also made the planting of a tree somewhere in the world possible, a bio cotton jumpsuit, natural cosmetics filled in recycled bottles, a subscription to the WWF journal, lots of rescued presents from second-hand shops, but also our cellar. I have asked friends and family to gift used presents, old books, old computers, old puzzles, that are sitting around and running the risk of just being turned into garbage. There are also some non-material presents as vouchers for online audiobooks, an animal sponsorship from Tierschutz but also "time" presents, in which my children and I offer their time and talents to do something for somebody else. Paradoxically, to some, those kinds of presents might seem small and meaningless, but I believe that the most beautiful thing we can offer to each other is our time. Time we give as a gift doesn't contribute to the growth of the GDP, nor can it be exchanged back into a product or into money. Time we give as a gift makes our bonds to others grow stronger and makes our lives more resilient as we build communities based on sharing, caring, and love. All in all, this Christmas, we reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink, recover and reconnect. We reduce cheap plastic presents, reuse old toys, recycle present packages, rethink what is meaningful, recover our old pagan traditions and reconnect with others and the nature around us. If you are looking for more inspiration for a different kind of Christmas, you can check some of those links to objects I mentioned or feel free to contact me.https://www.schutzfilisur.ch/, www.directcoffee.ch, www.librio.ch, www.bepure.ch, https://shop.wwf.ch/de/stories/weihnachten-2019 About the authorAlexandra was born in Russia, has lived in France, Austria, and Switzerland. She married a man from Chile, whom she meat in Zürich and with whom she has four beautiful children, three of which still have their feet on this earth. Alexandra's heart beats for our world, for a sustainable use of the available resources, for the rights of all people and the protection and preservation of our earth. She is a biologist, a computer scientist, and a research expert. She brings work experience in the exploration of complex issues, in the management of projects and partners and the application of agility and scrum methodology in IT projects. Alexandra holds a Master's degree in Biology, a Doctorate in Natural Sciences and several further education courses in Project Management, Leadership, and Scrum. She is currently looking for new working opportunities and is honorary involved in a project that coaches swiss residents and households to live more sustainable and more connected lives within their municipalities https://www.futurecamp.ch/

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