When I was a kid, my mom went all out for the holidays. There were the homemade Easter baskets, the green milk and green pasta in my lunchbox for St. Patty’s Day, and a different Christmas advent calendar for every room in the house. I always knew I’d carry on these traditions when I became a mother myself, but already I’m realizing it’s harder than it looks. Time is short and priorities are always shifting and most of the time I don’t even know what day of the week it is. Heck, I might need an advent calendar for every holiday; nothing like a square of chocolate to help me count down to Arbor Day! Holidays have a way of sneaking up on you if you’re not paying attention, and with so many other things going on all the time, usually the farthest thing from my mind is decking the halls with anything but all-purpose cleaner. My son’s first Easter basket, for example, contained a wealth of springtime trinkets sent to him by–who else?–my mother, plus a handful of reject candy I fished out of our pantry at the last minute. Granted, my son is only four months old and doesn’t care a fig for this sort of thing, but I figure I might as well use this first year as practice because lord knows I need it.

Which brings us to today: Earth Day. Although the holiday was founded in 1970, almost a decade before I was born, it wasn’t something that anyone I knew celebrated (or had even heard of) until more recently. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area there’s a range of Earth Day activities and programs to get involved in, and although my first response was to roll my eyes at the inevitable exploitation of yet another fine tradition, on second thought I concluded that this, of all holidays, deserves as much attention as it can get. It crosses religious, social, and political boundaries–we are all citizens of the planet Earth–and, unlike the consumerist fervor surrounding Christmas and Valentine’s Day, for once we can do more to honor the day by not buying anything, which is a blessing this year especially.

Still…I have the urge to do something special to mark the occasion. I’m thinking of whipping up some sky jello, but beyond that and maybe ringing in the day with a sunrise serenade of “We Are the World,” I’m not sure what to do. Surely there’s something crafty to do with all that plastic Easter grass.

Do you make Earth Day special for your family? If so, how do you celebrate?