After spending five years in sustainability consulting, I’ve learned to stress the simplicity of going green.  “Don’t make it too complicated.  Distill it into sound bites.  Play up the benefits.  Minimize the hurdles.  Make it seem easy.”  So goes the conventional wisdom in green marketing.  The idea behind this, of course, is to sell people on change when their natural inclination is to resist it. But even as I continue down this path, a question keeps nagging me.

When did sacrifice become a bad thing?

Each year I vow to make Christmas a little less extravagant.  Of course, any amount of scaling back would be an improvement over last year’s craziness.   I still remember the wave of nausea coming over me as I watched our toddlers rip through the pile of presents like a pair of sharks in a feeding frenzy.  Good intentions aside, overshopping proved to be too hard a habit to break. The thing is, our kids didn’t ask for it. In fact, they had been scared of Santa Claus and confused by the bizarre ritual of opening presents, not to mention the meaning of the holiday itself.  We had bought them all that stuff because in America, of course, stuff equals love.

I am a year older (and wiser) now.  So are Jordan and Ryan. They aren’t so scared of Santa Claus, and have even managed to ask him for a few things.  Their simple requests include a music box, a storybook, and a toy train.  I practically wept with joy when I saw this – but then it dawned on me.   As early as next year, those lists could include an iPod, a Wii, and other tech devices that I don’t even know how to use.  Christmas is never going to be this simple again, is it?