Helping EcoSanta

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Originally appears in the Winter 2020 issue.

By Ann Palmer

Once his sack is empty, EcoSanta is asking children worldwide to help him fill it with rubbish the rest of the year as a Gift to the Earth.

The idea of the EcoSanta concept was born just after Christmas as I watched my husband, wearing a red balaclava, drag a huge piece of sacking along the beach. Since the beginning of 2019, we at Ecologisers: The Young People’s International Anti-litter and Environmental Charity, have been promoting, popularising, and publicising EcoSanta as the children’s celebrity champion of the future — by any and all means that come to heart and mind.

The EcoSanta High Value Profile (below) outlines the rationale for adopting an EcoSanta identity:

1. It’s in tune with the culture of children’s environmental awareness.
2. It imparts a “working with” Santa idea in young minds — co-operation rather than “gimme, gimme.”
3. Mythologically, Santa Claus is the greatest gift-giver. For him to head up a giving, helping attitude is formative as a “way to be” in the world.
4. There’s no copyright on ideas. Any EcoSanta development is multi-interpretive — unique to each Santa who chooses to embrace the identity change towards a public image that is more relevant, robust, real, and long-lasting.
5. The “Santa experience” happens at a time of year when people’s hearts are open, so the embracing of EcoSanta is more likely to take hold.
6. Santa should not be confined to the “Christmas bubble,” but given a year-long identity as a hero-figure instrumental in helping young people and the planet.
7. The human heart naturally warms to anyone who steps “outside role” in the cause of greater good and intrinsic worth.
8. Flexibility of interpretation accommodates the minimalist/maximalist spectrum.
9. EcoSanta offers a huge uprate in the identity of Santa Claus — a contemporary modernisation which gives EcoSanta a significant role in re-shaping our culture.
10. This innovative Santa Claus is “in-character.” There’s a whole history of Santa’s identity changing and evolving.