04/12/2024
We’ve gathered some tips to help you decorate your church, give gifts, and make it magical for children while helping to care for God’s creation!
Recycle your candles
A flickering candle is an enduring symbol at Christmas as we remember how “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” [Isaiah 9:2]. But a candlelit carol service generates a lot of waste in the form of half -used candles, not to mention Advent crowns and the other candles you might have around your church. The Recycled Candle Company has a scheme where you can send off your candle ends to be recycled. Why not get the whole congregation in on the act and recycle any candles they’ve burnt at home too? You could even collect them throughout the year to send off after next Christmas.
Change your Christmas lights
There’s nothing more cheerful than a Christmas tree covered in fairy lights, not to mention outdoor displays of Christmas lights. But if you’re using old-fashioned strings of bulbs then that cheer comes at a cost to the environment and your bank account. By changing to LED lights, you’ll have brighter, longer lasting bulbs and it’ll cost a fraction of the amount to run them, saving your church money over the Advent period and burning less fossil fuel. Just imagine the impact if the whole congregation did the same!
Make your own decorations
While it can be tempting to refresh the display in church every year by buying something new to add to the decorations, by making your own you could lessen the impact on the environment and save money. Often it can feel impossible to source enough recycled materials to make your own. By involving the whole congregation in collecting toilet rolls, old cards, or foil cases, whatever you might need, it suddenly becomes much easier. You can make bunting out of last year’s Christmas cards to put along walls, string candles made of toilet rolls covered in washi tape or scraps of wrapping paper off the tops of pillars, and cut off the edge of foil cases and draw designs on them to create the effect of embossing which look fabulous hung off a rood screen. If you get the children of the church involved, it makes a great activity for the Sundays during Advent!
Don’t overdo the food
It can be easy to all pull together to provide a mince pie mountain for Advent and Christmas services but think carefully about how many boxes you will actually need and have a sign-up sheet so you can see how many you will be expecting. If it seems like too many, you can always quietly ask some people to consider donating fewer! I If you also provide a Christmas lunch to the community, think about what happens to the leftovers. People could take a Tupperware box full of food home, along with some recipe suggestions. There’s some great ones on the BBC Food website.
Think about your tree
It can be tempting to think that a fake tree is more eco-friendly but they are made using plastic and therefore fossil fuels. If you buy a quality one that will last more than 10 years, it does work out as the more sustainable option but if not, then buy a real tree grown as locally as possible, make sure it’s FSC-certified, and ensure it is correctly disposed of after it’s taken down. You could even rent a Christmas tree and then return it to be planted again in January.
If you have a space in your churchyard for it, how about buying a Christmas tree in a pot that lives outside most of the year and is taken inside and decorated every Christmas. Just remember to water it all year and make sure it doesn’t become root-bound.
Opt for sustainable church flowers
The movement for sustainable church floristry is growing and with a little creativity and a few props, you can produce spectacular results. Floral foam is made of microplastics bound together with harmful chemicals, so eliminating that from your floristry instantly makes your church displays more eco-friendly. Try to track down local, seasonal flowers (Flowers from the Farm has a tool for find UK flower farmers and sellers), or even use flowers from your garden and look for foliage and other additions in hedgerows and the churchyard! Chicken wire inside vessels or tightly wound string around boxes can provide more structure for flowers to sit in so the appearance of flowers arranged in floral foam can be replicated. Or use a range of pretty vases picked up from charity shops that can be swapped in and out depending on the season and length of the flower stems.
Recycle your foil correctly
If you’re serving a lot of mince pies this Christmas, this will generate a large amount of foil cases. These should be scrunched into a ball for recycling, the bigger the better. If you use foil on cardboard or wooden boards to reflect candlelight back into the room at services, this should also be recycled after any wax has been removed. If you don’t generate a huge amount at church, why not get the whole congregation to bring their washed foil to church the Sunday after Christmas and set the children to scrunching it all together for recycling.
Give homemade gifts
It’s nice to spoil our church family at Christmas to thank them for all the work they do throughout the year, whether that’s formally or informally within the church. Why not consider making gifts for them this year, such as baking biscuits, knitting/crocheting something, or making chocolate truffles. Or you could give the gift of time, by offering to cook for them once a month, or take them out for an afternoon somewhere they’ve never been.
Make sustainable crafts in your children’s groups
Children love making things but these don’t have to be made with all new materials. Why not trying making orange peel ornaments, rosemary wreath gift toppers, origami fabric stars (these also work with wrapping paper scraps!), zero waste tree decorations, gingerbread house garlands (with or without the fairy lights), or a sustainable Christmas garland.
Use recyclable cards and gift wrap
It’s amazing how many cards and how much wrapping paper can’t be recycled. If there’s glitter on cards, unless it’s biodegradable then it’s not recyclable and metallic wrapping paper is the same. A good rule of thumb is that if you can easily rip the paper then it can be recycled. Another is the scrunch test – if you hold it in your hand and scrunch it into a ball and it stays, then it can be recycled. Make sure you remove any sticky tape before popping it in the recycling bin! It’s even better to use recyclable tape too, which more and more shops are selling. Why not pledge as a church to have a greener Christmas by only using cards and gift wrap that can be recycled or reused?
Wishing you a joy-filled, peaceful, eco-Christmas!