Air Date: Week of December 1, 1995

Our listeners respond to a call for holiday gifts that are environmentally friendly and gentle on the human spirit.

Transcript

CURWOOD: Last week we asked you, our listeners, for your suggestions of holiday expressions that are environmentally friendly and gentle on the human spirit. First we have to say thank you. A lot of you have called or written, and we wish we could put all of them on the air, but we'll share as many as we can. A listener to KSMF in Ashland, Oregon, begins our first sample.

CALLER: What I'm doing along with a couple of my friends is we're giving mathoms. I believe it's spelled M-A-T-H-O-M-S. What they are is they're gifts that one has already owned, like something that's special to me that has value, that I give away to somebody. And along with it, this is my little addition, is to write a little note as to the importance of why I'm giving them something used instead of buying something new.

CURWOOD: Renee Marion of Livingston, Montana, likes to give away gifts from her green thumb.

MARION: As my houseplants reproduce I stick the cuttings in pots of dirt and give them away. I use the offsprings from my grandmother herb plants in the garden the same way as gifts. And any extra basil or other herbs I dry from my garden I put in little jars and give away as gifts. And I use the abundance of school paper that comes home for packages.

CURWOOD: And Yan Sturrmun of Bainbridge Island, Washington, wrote us this prose poem:

STURRMUN: An alternative to the Christmas frenzy. Imagine if on Christmas morning we all gathered in groups of 2 or more, between us an apple, a knife, maybe a candle. In quiet veneration we slice slivers of crisp, sweet fruit, and tenderly lay them on each other's tongue. Feel fingers briefly, touch lips. The taste, the texture, chew, swallow. And the fruit becomes my flesh, stillness. Maybe, briefly, eyes touch eyes as I offer apple to you. Just for a moment, reverence. That's all we ask, in a spell of intimacy, the human to human apple communion. What simple, ecstatic joy would resound forth across a land, this earth on such a day. I believe then we would re-enter the Garden of Eden. So that's a thought on Christmas. Thanks. See you later. Bye bye.