'Tis the season of things we do but once a year — which is good, because we let ourselves get away with stuff in the holidays that we wouldn't tolerate year around.
My job today is to tell you not to sweat your holiday season indulgences, nor to forget your best seasonal impulses. But lest this column be confused with Dear Abby (see elsewhere), we'll also check into whether our behavior at this time of year may hold lessons for the broader community.
Take that gluttonous Thanksgiving dinner. Relax, please. You enjoyed it too much to wallow in regret now. It's not as though you eat a 3,000-calorie meal every day, right? One day of over-eating isn't going to make you fat any more than a day of dieting will turn you thin.
For the purpose of this exercise in transferring the personal to the political, we may compare our Thanksgiving food indulgence to our appetite for public spending. Blowing out tax dollars on something special is OK unless we do it all the time or spend it on something that's not useful.
For example: The state has set aside tens of millions of dollars for a downtown Albany convention center project. These multimillion-dollar infusions don't come along all the time, so you may conclude that it's fine to take the money for something that will bring us a lot of benefit.
Of course, we're waiting for the evidence that this will be a wholesome investment — that is, nutritious for the Capital Region. Getting 3,000 calories from turkey, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie isn't the same as getting them from Pepsi, Pringles and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. If taxpayers are going to spend $63 million to finish the long-delayed convention center project, we need to be sure its value won't be as fleeting as a sugar high.
So, you get how this game is played, right? We'll look at some once-a-year activities that occupy us now, then reflect a bit on how they relate to what you've been reading about in the pages of the Times Union.
Let's get started:
You've covered your Christmas shopping spree with a credit card. Not good. We all know how dangerous it is to put all those Christmas presents on a plastic payment plan, but it's hard to resist. If only we had set aside money during the year, like those Christmas Clubs banks used to tout, or even tried a layaway plan for stuff we really want or need.
It makes me think of the Tappan Zee Bridge dilemma: We need to replace the 58-year-old bridge, but the $4 billion-plus pricetag is going to be steeper because of borrowing costs. If only we had funnelled tax dollars into a dedicated infrastructure fund, we wouldn't be facing the prospect of $15 tolls. Since the United States faces a $3.6 trillion bill to fix aging infrastructure before this decade is out, we'd better get the Christmas Club for Roads and Bridges going big-time now.
It's time to buy wrapping paper. But don't. When you need to wrap Christmas presents, use color comics pages from the newspaper, or brown paper bags, or anything but that wasteful, chemical-rich commercial package wrap.
There are some products we're better simply not using. Like the foam containers that Albany County is poised to partially ban. Plastic bottles for water, juice and soft drinks might be a good next target. The state should raise the deposit to a dime, so fewer bottles will be bought in the first place, then discarded.
Put snow tires on your car. Black Friday was a big day at tire stores. It's not just because of a snow tire's aggressive tread, the experts tell us, but also because they're made from a softer rubber compound that retains more flexibility in the cold, that these are a good investment during an upstate winter.
There are lots of ways that smart investment now can save lives and make life better in the future. Take, for example, the pipes that carry 1.2 billion gallons of raw sewage, rainwater and melted slush into the Hudson River each year. There's a tentative plan to invest $136 million to reduce that by about 85 percent. It's long overdue. The ongoing clean-up of the Hudson will restore it as a recreational treasure.
Buy a Christmas tree. They may shed needles on your carpet, but real trees — grown by American farmers, maybe including your neighbors — sequester carbon and create oxygen, thus cleansing the air. More than 90 percent of the 33 million trees that will be sold this year will be recycled. And they smell great. You don't want a non-biodegradable "tree" manufactured in a foreign factory, which will occupy a landfill long after your own last Christmas. (Sorry. Was that too blunt?)
Give generously. This season, remember not only loved ones, but charities and churches and other groups that make a difference in our community.
As the song says, "It's the most wonderful time of the year." Yes, if we focus more on giving than on acquiring. And if we don't get anxious about what can be truly a season of joy.