I didn’t expect to think of the Fraggles when reading about Indigenous perspectives on the environment, but that’s just how my brain works. Despite the weird connection, it gave me a new perspective on how I can treat holiday gifts and in fact, our whole community in the year to come.

“The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes.” As I read these words in the terrific book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a song immediately popped into my head. It’s a very simple and rather obscure song: “Pass It On.” It’s from the A Muppet Family Christmas, a 1987 television special that’s never been fully released to streaming or anywhere else because they didn’t have licensing rights for many of the songs outside of a single airing on TV. (It turns out this song was used in a Fraggle Rock episode too, but I know it from the special.) I didn’t watch the special growing up, but my husband did, and once we started dating, it soon became a family tradition for me as well.

In the bit, Kermit and his nephew Robin have encountered the Fraggles, who explain that their holiday traditions involve gifting and regifting their favorite pebbles. The lyrics of the song go: “When you’re giving love away / Love will come again to stay / What you give is what you gain / When you pass it on.” I’ve watched the special for years and just thought, “Well, that’s a nice message.”

But reading Kimmerer’s words explaining the idea of a “gift economy” put the lyrics in a whole new context. She explains how in a gift economy (which she’s describing from an Indigenous point of view), gifts are freely given without being earned. In contrast to buying and selling, gifts establish or reinforce relationships between people. In a gift economy, gifts aren’t just for special holidays. They’re an entire way of life.

What if we really did take the lyrics of the song and Kimmerer’s words seriously?

Holiday gifts would be different, of course. I think there could still be space for gift bought from the store, personalized for each person. While we might appreciate the possessions, we would know the true gift was not the physical item but the energy and care put into it. It would require taking the idea of “it’s the thought that counts” to heart and not treating it like a rote phrase. There could certainly be less “he got more than me!” nonsense from the kids, if we model it in our own lives first. Holiday gifts could also include prized possessions passed from person to person and gifts we made with our own hands. For those of us who are less crafty, perhaps it would be food grown or songs written. What if the meals we make for each other weren’t seen as an obligation but a way of showing our love? (For many people it is, but it’s easy to get caught up in the obligation framework.)

Extending this beyond physical gifts, we can see how if we viewed our money, time, and energy as gifts to be shared and received, we could change how we think about our daily lives. None of it would be hoarded, but both given away and freely accepted based on our needs. We wouldn’t take too many resources because we’d remember other people would need them too. The hierarchical nature of charity would disappear, replaced by the viewpoint of mutual aid. We would share with each other not because we deign to give to others as we choose but simply because we have things that can be shared.

I’ve seen this in action in a few places, but most obviously when my husband and I volunteered at an organization in Maine, Homeworkers Organized for More Employment. It started as a crafters’ cooperative and then expanded to meet the needs of the people in the community. By the time we volunteered for a month, there was a small intentional community, a food bank, a daycare program, a summer camp, a thrift store, a housing /land cooperative, and more. They didn’t distinguish between volunteers and the community members paid for work as part of the group’s mission of employing folks in need. From the organization’s perspective, they had a lakeside cabin to share with us (even if it was full of spiders) and we had free time and energy to share with them. We ate lunch in the soup kitchen and helped run the kids’ summer camp. They appreciated us, but we didn’t get any special accolades above and beyond any participant in their program. It was exactly how a community should be, in many ways.

Even further out, our communities would look very different from this point of view. We could think of the common goods that we collectively pay for – schools, libraries, parks – as gifts we all share, things we can all delight in. The act of paying taxes not would be a despised burden, but a welcomed act of fulfilling our responsibilities to one another.

This approach reminds me of one of my favorite places in my hometown. It was a giant wooden playground, full of monkey bars and hiding spots. One of the things that made it truly special was the fact that the community had come together to build it. My hometown didn’t have a ton of community spirit or public spaces, but the bricks on the walkway that had the names of all the people who helped build it was a testament to the power of collective effort.

This gift economy – based on sharing and relationship – offers us a different way to relate to the world and each other, as Kimmerer describes. It can provide a different model for ourselves and our children to build a future for them that’s more just and more peaceful. It offers a path towards true sustainability – making the season of gifts all year round, giving and taking what we need, no more and no less.