The After-holidays-hangover

So I made a few new years resolutions:

First: Get started with this blog again. I keep on coming with excuses for not writing here. If I'm not doing it now then when?

Second: Start to live more healthy. I got my second child in last October and now it’s time to get rid of my wobbly belly by starting to run and basing my diet on something else than chocolate. Both own these resolution have also bigger meaning because they are there to keep me sane especially during these hard winter months when I'm trapped alone in the danish countryside with two small children while the man of the house is mostly at work. So writing will make me feel like I have someone to explain my thoughts. And running and living healthy just make me happy.

Actually I have a third resolution too. Fight against the throwawayism. By this I mean the shopping oriented culture where more and more shortlived products pass through my family’s life and home. It comes with the mentality where we no longer value the materials that go into products or the labor that built them. Neither do we really care where the products end up after we have finished using them as long as it’s out of sight, out of mind. The culture that is constantly trying to lure it’s way to my home “because it’s so easy, fun and convenient and especially desiged and targeted for families with children”.

Let me tell you first why I'm interested in this right now. Because of my every year worsening after-holidays-hangover. And this hangover has nothing to do with drinking or eating too much, it’s the stuff, the garbage bags filling with wrapping papers, packages and Christmas decoration, and kids crying for more and better gifts. Every year Christmas leaves me with the same empty feeling after all that proving your love with stuff and consumption. And as if Christmas wasn’t enough, then comes the new year which we welcome with another consumption peak of disposables. “Here’s a garbage and trash thrown in the sky for five seconds joy, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!”.

I’ve been battling with my anxiety every year but now that I have children it’s worse since I can’t pretend like there is no Christmas. Could I celebrate Christmas on my own way without so much emphasize on the material? Sure, but how to do it when everything around them says “the more material, the more fun”.  Even disturbingly many Christmas programs has the same message where the children’s holidays were ruined and souls left with everlasting scars if they wouldn’t get Christmas presents! And I know it will get even harder as the kids grow up and they’ll learn to compare the amounts and sizes of their gifts and money spent on them. Even though I’m talking about Christmas here I’m also talking about the mentality children learn for the rest of their life. Children learn that you can show your love with stuff. They learn that they can show worthiness with stuff. They learn to patch emptiness with stuff. They build their identity on stuff. They learn that you are the stuff you have.

So hereby with this new year’s resolution I declare to try to get my children to appreciate immaterial in their everyday life before it’s too late and I will try my best to avoid selling my soul to consumerism. I will also try to come up with new ways to reuse things and to avoid disposables. And yes, I’m doing this despite the obvious risk of becoming the embarrassing party pooper who lectures about the environmental effects of a plastic drinking cup and the evil monster who steals children’s gifts and party decoration :)

Happy new year and patience to all those in my near family circles! Here's an inspiring video to start year 2014 :)