The concept of a green holiday is so new, said Amanda Freeman, a founder of the environmental Web site Vitaljuicedaily.com, that no one has yet codified the etiquette. "I think you have to watch the line between giving people helpful tips they may not know about, and criticizing everything they do," she said.
The drama is heightened because "everyone already feels pressure this time of year," said Pauline Wallin, a clinical psychologist in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, "The roads are more crowded, the malls are more crowded. There are expectations to be nice to people you don't necessarily like. When somebody comes in and starts preaching, it's one more thing they have to think about."
Indeed, Claire Roby, a senior majoring in environmental studies at American University in Washington, said she is already preparing for conflict when she travels home to Oklahoma this Christmas. Roby plans to spread the green message with the gifts she gives: handmade clocks made from discarded CDs and scavenged electronic components, wrapped in newspaper.
"We'll see how much we can avoid a dinner table argument this year," Roby, 22, said. "There's always that uncle or grandfather who knows what you care passionately about and is going to say anything he can to rile you up."
Wallin said that environmental activists can avoid arguments by trying to lead by example, not by lecture. "Don't force them to change," she said. "It may take two or three seasons, but you are not going to get anywhere by showing up and thumbing your nose."
Anxious greens can consult the Sierra Club's Web site, which provides scripts to recite during dinner-table debates. It remains to be seen if that view will ever come to prevail among the most vocal champions of conspicuous yuletide consumption: children.
Victoria Perla, the author of the children's book When Santa Turned Green and a mother of two, said she tried to introduce her children to an ecologically conscious holiday by increments.
With children, Perla said: "You don't need to take them along in baby steps. Kids can learn faster than that."
Still, she said: "If you turn around and say this Christmas is going to be 180 degrees different from every Christmas you've ever had, that wouldn't be fair, or realistic. You have to bring them along slowly."
In her own family, Perla said she read her children her book - in which Santa's home at the North Pole is melted by global warming - before bed, but also conditioned them to anticipate experiential gifts, as well as robes and slippers for the winter when she keeps her thermostat down. Already, she said, her daughter, Julia, 6, has dozed off "absolutely wired up, talking about her green ideas, speaking about carbon dioxide correctly."
Perla's 10-year-old son, Paul, who routinely used Christmas to stock up on the latest electronic toys, also sounded convinced.
"You don't have to wrap your presents and stuff," he said. "You waste paper by doing that. And sometimes there's a lot better things than toys, like if you got taken to a really good show."
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