December 1st, 2007

By Shermakaye Bass

So you’re ready to deck the halls, but you’re not sure about using real-live holly (tricky, because it can dry out and shed). Perhaps you don’t want to mess with holly or maybe you don’t feel creative enough to fashion boughs and garlands from the real stuff. But if you’re dreaming of a seriously green, home-spun Christmas, we’ve got a few tips for you. Some are humble and simple, some elegant and simple. All leave a minimal footprint during your Yuletide season.

Culled from experts around the country, from Martha Stewart’s website to the National Wildlife Federation’s online store to the Sierra Club, our green tips will help ease your global conscience during this time of grace, and unnecessary waste.

You’ve already thought of common sense things like recycling your Christmas tree – and to make it even easier, the National Christmas Tree Association and Arizona-based Earth 911 have created a website where people can locate one of 3,800-plus recycling centers around the country.

But did you know that, if everyone in the United States substituted conventional holiday light strings with LEDs (light-emitting diode lights), at least 2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity could be saved in one month? That, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s enough to power 200,000 homes for a year, says Colorado-based Holiday Creations, which makes and distributes a popular line of LED light strings (and publishes the chart, right, showing that 600 LED lights cost a mere $1.24 to operate for a month of holiday spirit, compared to about $90 for a similar string of incandescents).

So go forth and decorate with a joyful heart; make this Christmas your greenest ever.

COOK UP SOMETHING SPECIAL
Everyone knows that holiday cooking is one of the traditions that brings families together each year, so why not cook up some cool decorative items? Gingerbread is the old-fashioned way, and the aroma makes your house smell wonderful. If you want to create gingerbread Christmas ornaments or garlands, for actual decorating, you’ll have to forfeit the sweet pay-off because they become too hard to eat. But they’re still a great sustainable way to decorate. EHow.com has good step-by-step instructions, or to make “gingerbread” figures from sandpaper, see the article on the Family Crafts website.

But if you want real gingerbread – as in edible decorative cookies – try the easy and traditional recipe featured on Cooks.com.

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