I'M DREAMING OF A GREEN CHRISTMAS
Alexandra Artley explores
the ecological dilemmas of the festive season
'JUST one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.' Firmly strapped into the back of a Deux Chevaux stickered with impor- tant themes, Child Green looks out through windows, rain-forests and leaping whales as Green Woman whizzes lead-free along the alternative shopping routes. From Bumble Bee Foods (where she keen- ly examines every leek from root to tip) to the Earthlore Co-op (full of taped in-store Gregorian plain-chant and husky Andean flutes) the labels she avidly reads on food packaging seem to get longer and longer each year. Things to go with drinks are vital. On a packet of Japanese brown rice snacks called Samurai Puffs, Green Woman finds that the label has become a rather dreadful 300-word short story:
Two Samurai are walking down the road in Old Japan. The first one says to the second one, 'All that junk food you eat makes me sick. You'd be a lot healthier if only you ate the finest and purest foods as I do ...'
Next, comes something sweet that might suit a difficult aunt. On a pretty ceramic honey pot thrown 'with natural imperfec- tions' in the shape of a country cottage, a bee travelogue from Devon lies in wait:
Time after time on sunlit days these busy little workers fly from our hives to gardens and orchards, fields and wild hedgerows. They visit Folly Gate, Weeks-in-the-Moor, even South Zeal...
As the additives go out of food labelling the literature pours in. With only two read- ing days left before Christmas Green Woman must be quick.
In Green circles where everything in life is supposed to open like a flower, even shopping for and preparing Christmas din- ner unfolds in several natural pre-ordained stages. First comes the Very Alternative Christmas dinner. In free-wheeling days, before or just after marriage, Greens often lie in bed thinking about cooking from slightly daft Californian soft-cover books. These are never type-set but for an earthy touch are personally 'hand-scripted' by the author with an italic nib. During this stage in life young Greens muse, for example, over The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen (Ten Speed Press, Ber- keley, 1982). Here, on a purple cover, broccoli spears stand upright against a moonlit sky ('you know ... broccoli spears are very like mature trees ...'). From these American cookery books eventually comes a frighteningly inventive Christmas dinner involving giant stuffed mushrooms, 'pineapple-glazed yams' and nut brioche. With festive decorative touches combining holly, Krishna, mistletoe, doves of peace, Bethlehem and dragons, young Greens follow Mr Patel the newsagent in celebrat- ing Christmas, Divali and the Winter Sol- stice with indiscriminate joy.
Behaving a bit more like other people is gloomily known to Greens as 'becoming part of the structure'. Seven years later (plus two or more children) means that Christmas dinner reaches its Green Family phase — an elegant compromise of matur- ity. Every year in The Vegetarian, Rose Elliot (the Green Mrs Beeton) gives her regal message to veggie families every- where: 'I am inclined to keep Christmas dinner as traditional as possible.' Getting into the swing of it means all the usual things minus goose or turkey (organic sprouts and chestnuts, organic roast pota- toes, organic cranberry sauce and bread sauce, organic suet-free plum pudding and brandy butter). Gasping at the price of nuts — pound for pound, pine-nuts, cashews and brazils now cost more than poultry — Green Woman constructs a delicious stuffed nut roast en croute. Stir- ring the ideologically pure gravy (whacked together from sherry, orange juice and soy), she feels this sort of Christmas dinner is perfection — tradition is maintained but Green principles are upheld.
Years ago when his elderflower cham- pagne blew the roof off a shed, Green Man decided that home-made wine was rather naff. Laying down stocks of fine old Hirondelle, he was thankful that wine was so clearly part of the vegetable kingdom (the Greens could drink, if not eat, without conscience). But this year, as he draws the corks on Christmas Eve, Green Man senses a progressive new agony to come — the pros and cons of organic wine. Snippets of information are already filed away in the home computer: 'Putting the veritas back into vino' ... 'headaches' ... 'If you are allergic to common additives in wine (ex- cept sulphur dioxide) you can relax and enjoy organic wine with confidence.' He cannot prevent the little Green labels of enlightened European wine from floating into mind — Suole e Salute (on that good chianti), Vida Sana (they have yet to try the Spanish), Nature et Progres . . . Terre et Vie ... Production de l'Agriculture Biologi- que on a fresh French white ... Deciding to investigate all this very fully after Christ- mas, Green Man suddenly wonders what that heavy purple slurry in his newly drained glass might be.
'Deck the halls with boughs of holl-ee ...' Out in the kitchen Green Woman slaps thick marzipan paste on her rich organic Christmas cake. Undeterred by lack of eggs for icing, she nipped along to Sun- wheel Foods for a packet of vegan `Marzi' (unique ground almond stuff you mix with fruit juice). Around the warm chaotic kitchen are stacked the sound Green foods of Christmas — stones of organic veget- ables (each carrot now costs 15p), 'Epi- cure' brand mince-meat, amusing gold boxes of carob 'chocolates', tofu black bun and haggis, Norfolk punch and a water- filter (needed now, alas, in Britain). Mean- while, shuddering in the freezer lies a cinnamon and brandy ice-cream 'Christ- mas Pudding' in a heritage box showing Loseley Hall dredged with snow.
Ten years ago, Green Woman reflects, whole-food used to look so simple — everything now seems 'marketed' and costs so much. The kitchen window bears an early sticker, 'Live Simply That All May Live'. Safely enclosed for the first time in New Age affluence, the Greens no longer feel ascetic. Predicting what some poorer British citizens will eat tomorrow, they feel the verdant tendrils of Green Guilt.
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