White Christmas? Blue Christmas? Green Christmas?

The tune that gets stuck in my head is the middle one, and it's always an Elvis style voice, too. "I'll have a bloooooo Christmas, without you..." sniff, sniff, sob...oh, the sadness of being left by his baby at the holidays!
But seriously, folks, people are already thinking about holiday shopping and some have already started. Um, yes, I have. And others have been thinking about how to make their Christmas more green this year. Leah at the Lean, Green Family asked commenters to share their own families green traditions at holiday time. I talked about getting the most out of wrapping paper in this post last year. There are other ways of being environmentally conscious on Christmas.
Shop online or combine shopping trips. Carbon Footprint may be the trendy phrase, but it's true that using additional gas costs more money and expels more pollution into our airspace. Driving fewer miles is cost-effective and eco-conscious.
Shipping packages? Use paper from your home shredder instead of foam packing materials. If you've shredded it well enough, it won't give away any personal information, and it makes a great cushion for gift boxes. It's recyclable at the receiving end, too.
Here's a unique story of reduce, reuse, and recycle of holiday materials. Our Christmas tree gets reused. No, it's not a live tree that gets planted in the yard. It's not artificial, either.
We have neighbors who hunt, fish, and remain outdoors and active year-round. In our neck of the woods, people go ice fishing and sturgeon spearing. The neighbors are part of a group that collects these trees as people put them out on the curb. The "used" trees will become a path, a guide line that marks a safer path across the ice on Lake Winnebago. By sticking to a track that has been tested for its thickness, spearers and ice fishermen can feel a little more secure as they travel to their shanties.
If our tree didn't go out on the lake, the city crews would pick it up and feed it through their chipper, where it would eventually end up part of the park department's mulch. The tree gives us pleasure, after which it can be put to another use, which pleases me, too.

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