Trimming the merry excess

Can the consumerist frenzy of Christmas have any relationship to the modern idea of "ethical" living?

Try saying this word aloud. Shopocalypse. You won't find it in any dictionary but it shouldn't be hard to figure out what it means, especially once you consider the man who coined it -- New Yorker Reverend Billy who heads the Church of Stop Shopping.

In a documentary called What Would Jesus Buy?, Reverend Billy -- real name Bill Talen -- drags his Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a tour of American malls, chainstores and coffee franchises, casting out the demons of consumerism and exorcising credit cards.

He's a fake evangelist in a crisp white suit with a pompadour set like an ice sculpture, but there is serious method to his performance-art madness. His view is that Christmas has turned into a jingle hell of bloated consumerism that isn't just soul-destroying, but economy-destroying, even planet-destroying.

This is the shopocalypse -- the consumer excess that will bury us. In the blizzard of statistics that pepper his anti-shopping sermons, there are some alarming numbers: something like five million tonnes of extra household waste is generated in the United States every Christmas.

And he's not a voice in the wilderness. The idea of taking Christmas as an ethical test is catching on, including in New Zealand.

So how would you have an ethical Christmas? You would buy locally made products, rather than bright, cheap junk ground out of Chinese sweatshops. You would try to source your Christmas dinner locally, being mindful of food miles. And that dinner wouldn't come home in plastic supermarket bags but in green bags you took to the store with you. Preferably on foot. If not by donkey.

What else should you do? Don't buy things people don't need. Don't cover your house in Christmas lights and leave them burning 24/7, unless they're solar-powered. Unplug your electronics from the wall when you go on holiday.

Recycle where possible: is there anything wrong with re-using Christmas cards you got last year, with your own name crossed out and the new recipient's name written in? A Christmas tree made of toilet-roll tubes, bottle caps and hemp might look ridiculous now, but next year, everyone will be doing it. Paint it green, if it helps.

When you throw out your Christmas waste, don't bin it. Food scraps should make their way to the worm bin or the bokashi unit. If you're shipping overseas, use cornstarch peanuts for packaging rather than stryofoam or bubble wrap -- cornstarch peanuts dissolve in water. When your kids are sick of their new toys on December 28, don't bin them -- pass them on to charity.

If you must shop, then shop for those less fortunate. Check out the -- I don't think it's a parody -- World Toilet Organisation, which seeks donations to assist with toilet-building in the developing world. Shoppers have three pricey choices: the stand-alone toilet at $US500; the community toilet at $US3000; and the school toilet at $US5000.

Internationally, Oxfam has streamlined and marketed this aid process, with each national branch offering the Oxfam Unwrapped programme.

In New Zealand, Oxfam Unwrapped has run since 2005 and it has gathered momentum, Oxfam marketing co-ordinator Arron Peacock says. The gifts range from school books and condoms ($10) to safe water for 50 people ($80) to a baby buffalo ($130) to a coconut press ($320), all going to Oxfam New Zealand's part of the developing world -- the Pacific and South-east Asia. You make the donation to Oxfam, which then sends a card telling your giftee that the books or ducks (three, $15) or toilet ($50) has gone out in their name.

Earlier this month, Oxfam New Zealand had sold more than 15,000 gift cards, since starting the Christmas push in October. So what items are proving popular? "Out in front at the moment are chicken and ducks," says Peacock. He warms to the metaphor: "Goats are nipping in behind, trotting along quite nicely. People seem to love the livestock idea.

"But this year I've also seen a trend towards `build a life' gifts, such as training a farmer. Mosquito nets are very popular. Coffee plants also."

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me . . . one goat a-bleating. Of course, the ducks and goats ($45) won't write letters to families in the manner of a child sponsorship, but there is the possibility of follow-up, Peacock says -- the giver can get reports on the change the gift is making.

There's a terrible image, though. What's to stop the starving poor falling upon their gift and . . . "I suppose there's that question: are they used for food? In our experience, this livestock is far too valuable to eat -- they're people's livelihoods. We had a great story come out of the Sudan where people were very proud of their donkeys. Not just pleased, but proud."

It's easy to see the appeal of Oxfam Unwrapped: it's both ethical and easy, requiring the internet and a credit card. Ultra-convenience might be one cause of the shopocalypse, but here it's part of the cure.

But the scheme has its critics. The makers of a British documentary, Keeping Africa Small, claim that programmes like Oxfam Unwrapped keep Africans in a hand-to-mouth existence based on Western ideas about the developing world. Do they want grass-eating rodents and water pumps or do they want washing machines and PlayStation games?

"Who decided that Ghanaians' needs are so basic?" asked Keeping Africa Small's producer, Viv Regan.

If there is a New Zealand Reverend Billy, it might be Mike Ward, former Green Party MP and Nelson legend. But that description doesn't really do him justice _ his own is better. ``I'm an artist, an adventurer. I make lovely things.''

In 2004, while in Parliament with the Greens, Ward drew attention to consumerist waste and excess by making a Christmas tree out of junk in Wellington's Cuba Mall. He and his ``green fairies'' scavenged a dump in Porirua _ much the same process led to his 2004 entry in the World of Wearable Arts, a work called Post- Apocalyptic Pacific Troubadour, which showed us what we might all be wearing in our Mad Max future.

All that garbage in Porirua seemed to say so much to Ward: the ``absurdity'' of lives spent slaving for things we don't need.

Christmas became a symbol of it. ``Every speech I give is about this absurdity,'' Ward says. ``If you live to be 1000, there isn't time to do all the great stuff there is to do. Why would you spend so much time in joyless work in order to buy stuff you don't need and don't get a lot of pleasure out of? That is the great problem that con fronts us every day. It's what cli mate change is about. It's what lives lacking in joy are about.''

So it occurs to him that the best presents are experiences not products _ that's what kids really value and remember. Off the top of his head? The sailing club offers lessons _ what a great thing to get young people into. The Nelson City Council has just put out a book of walks. You could give it to your family with a voucher saying that we'll do all of them.

He's into the voucher system. Not the store-bought voucher that's ``just an excuse to go shopping'', but a homemade voucher. ``Maybe it's walking the dog, maybe it's watering the garden. Maybe reading stories or a cuddle.''

Nice. If you must buy, Ward says, try to buy locally _ so that you're aware not just of the impact (a good one, hopefully) on the person you've bought the thing for, but also the conse quences for the person you've bought it from. A person much like Ward, who is an artist, selling his work in the markets in Nelson. ``If you're going to buy stuff, make sure it's great stuff _ stuff that will enhance your life and make the ordinary things wonderful. I sell a little teaspoon for $75 or $100. I forge them out of brass or silver bits and pieces. I tell people that if you're going to buy this thing, you have to take sugar in everything to justify buying it. You don't buy it to leave it sitting around in a box somewhere.''

Now where does Ward stand on some of the other questions that might form part of an ethical Christmas test. Fake tree or real tree? No, even better _ if his grandchildren are visiting, he decorates an existing pine on his section, but if you don't have one, grow a tree in a pot and decorate it, he says, then plant it.

Christmas cards: the real thing or the more environment ally friendly e-card? (It's been mooted that the true resource- conserving option is to wish: "Merry Christmas'' to everyone you encounter or talk to on the phone to from about September on). Ward is old school - he goes for real cards. "I tend to draw them myself."

And food? Should you have a vegetarian nut-roast Christmas, considering how much land the production of meat requires? Actually, Ward is a vegetarian who backslides at Christmas. But the food will always be local where possible.

"I make a point of seeking out local stuff. That's not a chore really. I just call it beating the system. Is it difficult to find local food? No, it's not. In a food-producing nation, the fact that 60 per cent of the stuff we eat is imported is a total farce to me. I eat lots of herb and spice, and the spice will be imported, but I grow chillies, so I can provide some myself."

"When you do the ordinary things you do everyday, think of the consequences.''

In that sentence is the Green message in its entirety. So it might strike you that Ward is less a radical than a conservative. The political right aren't the real conservatives, these guys are _ and in a good way. They privi lege experiences over products, the local over the global; prefer ring leisure to overwork, hand made to the mass-produced.

And they're persuasive. Talk to Ward for a while and you start thinking: is it possible that Christmas is now entering the third phase of its evolution? It was religious, then it became consumerist - now it might become humanitarian.

"I'm a heathen from way back,'' Ward says, ``but I just like Christmas. I like the gentleness and kindness of it. Whatever your beliefs are, he was a real guy and a pretty good bloke by all accounts, and that's worth celebrating and the occasion is Christmas.

"And while I have no religi ous affiliation whatsoever, I'm aware that the great lack is a commitment to anything that is worthwhile. I don't know how often we even ask, what is it all about? What sort of future do we aspire to for our children? We don't ask those questions any more. In the past, religion did that for us.''

So, anyway, what would Jesus buy? the movie is a joke on a popular evangelical slogan _ what would Jesus do? - which is taken as a personal motto by Christian teens in the US. (This isn't the first time it has been reworked by activists: anti-SUV campaigners asked "What would Jesus drive?'' and anti- Iraq war protesters wondered - "Who would Jesus bomb?'').

The question isn't answered in the film, but producer Morgan Spurlock - who ate nothing but burgers and told the tale in the movie Super Size Me - had a response when MTV asked.

"Maybe some sweatshop- free sandals, a really good bagel and fair-trade robes.'' Blessed are the goat-givers.