And now it’s ‘Little Christmas Eve’; the day before Christmas Eve, an expression learned by my family, many years ago, from Jostein Gaarder’s ‘The Christmas Mystery’. The jobs that are done are done, the ones that are left undone are labelled unimportant, and definitely not urgent. The sprouts have arrived, along with the other vegetables and the meat.
Tomorrow will be a day of preparation. Today is a day of anticipation and reflection. Remembering Christmases past, relishing the present and already reflecting on the future. This morning’s news reports brought the statistic of the decade: the estimated accumulated deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is 8.4million football pitches. In another traditional statistical measurement, I make that roughly equivalent to a country three times the size of Wales.
This granny is no ecologist, but neither am I unwise. I recognise that is a lot of trees. The lungs of the earth are shrinking. Shrinking fast. We have a responsibility to take care of the earth. I will definitely be looking at how I can live differently to minimise my own carbon footprint. That will be a part of working positively towards changing things I cannot accept.
But let’s not be too gloomy. It’s the season of joy, love, hope and peace. A celebration of the birth of Christ. A time to make merry with family and friends; but I think that we are all waking up to the fact that there’s no room in the festivities for unnecessary waste. I’ll be challenging myself to do better in 2020.
This granny 