Reclaiming the holi-daze
by Lauren Ballesteros-Watanabe | Reading time: 2.5 minutes
The holidays are often synonymous with fun, family, food, and the inevitable stress. Although we don’t like to reflect on stress during such a time, it sort of comes with the territory when it comes to all the planning involved for the season. Financial stress, endless to-do lists for each holiday, decorating sustainably, end-of-the-year anxieties about another year come and gone, being around family for long periods of time (can go either way), time management keeping kids entertained while they’re out of school, making sure we still meet our work deadlines, the list goes on. It all adds up to a whole lot on our shoulders. In fact, a 2018 study found that 88% of Americans felt stressed while celebrating the holidays with women shouldering the load.
But despite the oversaturation of consumer culture’s view of what these holidays “should be,” many of us just value the much needed dedicated time to be in communion with those that we love. This holiday season, the decolonization series is offering deeper reflection in our ongoing efforts to find meaning in our work and personal lives against the backdrop of consumerism, capitalism, and colonialism. It is especially important this month coming out of the problematic nature of “Thanksgiving.”
In order to reclaim the holidays and celebrate traditions, new and old, we are going to offer some ideas and advice that remind us and our families what’s so special about this time of year. Creating a new perspective on the holidays can potentially begin with reorienting the season from an indigenous point of view. The goal being to ground ourselves (settlers) into honoring the voices of the lands we are privileged to be on. I hope these quandaries inspire you to be challenged enough to consider new ways of celebrating this Western consumer culture dominated holiday season.
Indigenous perspectives of gift giving offers a more profound understanding of what it means to exchange with another. For centuries, gift giving has been an important aspect of intertribal and interpersonal relations among. The giving of gifts has symbolized friendship, respect, honor, and much more. In contrast, consumer culture has turned gift giving into a frenzy of consumption with a slew of dire outcomes. According to Jagdish Sheth, a marketing professor at Emory University, “Consumer culture is a system in which consumption, a set of behaviors found in all times and places, is dominated by the consumption of commercial products.” Consumer culture can have many negative impacts, one being on the environment. This leads to high household consumption, which makes up 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study conducted by Ivanova, a researcher in the department of energy and processing at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, along with his colleagues. Consumer culture has helped normalize the expectation of consumption around the holidays.
As mentioned in the opening, materialism can also have negative impacts on holiday festivities. Tim Kasser, a professor in psychology who specializes in materialism and well being, conducted a study and found “that the more highly people endorsed materialistic values, the more they experienced unpleasant emotions, depression and anxiety, the more they reported physical health problems, such as stomachaches and headaches, and the less they experienced pleasant emotions and felt satisfied with their lives”. Putting emphasis on the gift-giving during the holiday pushes a materialistic mindset, which can lead to stress and dissatisfaction.
Moving forward, confronting and rethinking what we buy and where it comes from: exploitation of either land, resources or even people to produce mass amounts of stuff is a great start. Fortunately, we have the sincere wisdom of indigenous peoples to look towards to ground and balance our holiday activities in something real. The following are just a few indigenous perspectives that might help you feel a little more comfortable with celebrating the holidays consciously:
Find meaning in sharing: In many Indigenous cultures, the practice of gift giving has unique significance. The tradition shows respect to the receiver of the gift, as well as to their family and ancestors. Perhaps making something meaningful for a loved one, even your child, can illicit some great conversation on how it was made.
Keeping traditions alive: Indigenous Peoples treat children as knowledge holders for future generations. Perhaps a gift can be passing down something meaningful to you and, like above, can be a conversation starter about personal or family history. This can also be a tradition done during the holidays not just a passing on of an item.
Support community and Indigenous artisans: goes without saying that as settlers, that a conscious holiday gift would be something locally made
We are all balancing genuine gratitude for getting time off to spend with our loved ones. For many, that is worth its weight in gold. So here are some beginning tips and advice on decolonizing the major holidays by supporting culture, circular economies, and sustainable activities. So here are a list of ways to decolonize the gift giving during the holidays that honors a localized resilient economy:
Hopefully this list helps you gather, cook, be thankful, and honor your loved ones with a little less stress this time of year. Changing habits and building new traditions takes time, so do what you can and have a gorgeous rest of 2022, friends!