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Merry Christmas, Tat is Over
As another Christmas disappears from the rear view mirror of life, and with environmental awareness greater than ever (aka our planet is dying), is it time to think about ending the tradition of Christmas tat once and for all?
What is tat? Some people call it crap but let’s be nice and call it tat. You know it when you see it and Christmas has an awful lot of it. Tinsel, crackers, random decorations, useless presents and streams and streams of wrapping paper. Is it time for a shift in how we do Christmas?
This past Christmas, I’d left my crucial present buying until not quite the last moment. I also needed to get some things for my wife’s stocking — a collection of cheaper, fun items. This year’s tat purchasing included the traditional gold chocolate coins, as well as a snowman wine stopper and a plastic tube containing tin foil-covered sweets complete with a fabric bear in an elf costume on top.
Luckily I had left it near enough to Christmas that there were several items already discounted but as I looked over each potential stocking filler, I felt increasingly unconformable. Most of it was not really anything useful. Some people complain about getting socks for Christmas, but socks are very useful. It would be discarded after Christmas and put in a drawer or even put in a pile destined for the bin in the post-Christmas clear up. The most…
