It is not just human lives but also festivals, which are losing their color and glow attributed to climate change.
Christmas brings great memories back: of the Christmas tree decorated with gifts and sparkly lights, the Santa laughing big with shiny gifts, a snowman with carrot nose, rejoicing to the very tone of beautiful hymns and carols.
Coming in almost the year end, it offers a way out to fill hearts with joy and glory, unaffected from any bearings since the year spent in pain or disdain and begin afresh.
But many of these customs are restricted to certain regions of the world like in Netherlands, ice skating in frozen ponds or bogs or lakes, is a common trend.
“You’ll see very young children holding onto chairs as they scrabble along, as old people skate by hand-in-hand. It’s a truly magical scene.”
But will this prevail till eternity?
Philippines is one such country that is most vulnerable by disasters caused due to changing climate and has struggled to celebrate a prosperous and safe Christmas.
Just a few days before its festive season, the country got hit by even more than 20 cyclones or typhoons annually. This has caused debilitating effects on country’s development and causes flooding.
And all this has changed the great Filipino Christmas experience.
“People were stranded on rooftops and all the roads were flooded. A few days before Christmas, we were still helping clean up the mud that had flooded the houses.”
Focusing on the changes caused around human lives on a warming planet:
“We are fighting for our festival traditions to continue and to keep our family and community bonds.”
For a population that needs to batter with an altered surrounding, inability to celebrate in full seems to cause dual impact as it even devoid the victim of an opportunity to move ahead in time.
For instance, Santa, a idol and a source of happiness for many underprivileged kids, cannot reach even the intended places because of changed circumstances.
Climate change: eating up the whole Christmas-New Year experience:
“Christmas has changed a lot since I was a child. We used to play a lot of different games outside. Now we can’t do it anymore because of the flooding”.
“Today children can’t enjoy Christmas in the same way as they always have to be careful and prepared that something is going to happen.”
Even certain regions experience the power cuts during heavy demand fueled by festival and cannot afford using the fairy lights to decorate homes and fill colors in their life.
In addition, heat waves hitting the countryside in certain regions push the temperatures as high as 117 degrees, including the United States and hence Christmas tree industry falls prey to the heat.
There had been instances of more than 250,000 trees being destroyed.
These trees require nine years to grow and any abrupt heat may perish them forever.
Not just heat, even diseases prosper with heat: A fungus sustaining and thriving in the heat, is smothering splendid Scotch pines and Fraser firs.
Farmers explain how “It’s gotten to the point where we can’t grow certain species that were the most popular species.”
One of the consequences of this vulnerability can be an increase in the number of plastic trees but while a real tree absorbs emissions, a plastic one creates a space for more emissions because of the shipping needs and procuring PVC plastic from China.
Shortages, rising costs, additional wastage and sheer disappointment is what comes in future.
According to an interview given to The Nature Conservancy: “I think everyone would like to continue growing Frasier Firs and Balsam Firs because they’re so popular, but they’re more susceptible to climate impacts, like drought, like freezing, and insects and diseases”.
In response, does Christmas and New Year have a carbon footprint?
Yes, to an extent. Loss of a tree is a loss forever.
How trees are grown with the extensive use of pesticides causes potential damage to serene wildlife habitats, especially in the peat bogs pine grow in.
But if we organically curb our footprints while we celebrate and make our Nature easy to sustain, there might be a chance that the planet doesn’t hit back on us.