Skipping Gifts at Christmas
By Ryan Healy | January 11, 2008
Christmas is over, New Year’s is over, and we’re now sinking into the cold days of winter. It’s a good time for reflection. Today, I’d like to reflect on a little experiment I conducted during the holidays. What was this experiment? Basically, on my side of the family, we decided NOT to give gifts to each other. (On my wife’s side of the family, we still exchanged gifts.)
We decided to skip gift-giving for two primary reasons.
1. Material Abundance
Honestly, we really don’t need anything. Give me a few good books and some peace and quiet and I’m happy. Same goes for most of my family members. I think my #1 need year in and year out is socks. I’m the guy with threadbare socks that expose my heels and the balls of my feet. But who wants to go sock-shopping for Christmas?
Plus, every American family has a parent or sibling who “has everything.” What do you buy for him or her? It’s always a struggle. What’s worse is that whatever you buy is often not appreciated. Sometimes it’s simply exchanged or returned by the recipient. How much of a wast of time is that? Buying a gift that’s just going to be returned. Not my idea of fun.
The second reason we skipped gift-giving is…
2. We All Want to Get Free from Debt
For many families, Christmas is an excuse to go further into debt. They justify their irresponsible use of credit because not giving gifts would violate “the spirit of Christmas.” Which raises a good question. What is the spirit of Christmas? Materialism? It sure seems so. If you don’t exchange gifts, you’re seen as modern Scrooges… “Bah, humbug!”
It seems to me we’ve lost our way. When you can’t celebrate Christmas without giving gifts, something is wrong.
I feel like our experiment was a success. This year we spent very little on Christmas. We gave our kids only a couple toys each. My wife and I didn’t give each other gifts at all. And on her side of the family, we spent about $150. We got a gift for her dad, her mom, her brother, and grandparents. (Among the siblings, we draw names so that we only give one gift to one sibling instead of a gift to each sibling. This saves us quite a bit of money.)
All told, I think we spent less than $200 on Christmas. This is a big accomplishment because we didn’t rely on credit to buy gifts. In fact, we still paid down our debt during the last month. Not by much, but by some. What’s more, we weren’t as stressed out trying to find “the perfect gift.” We got to relax a bit more than normal.
If spending money on gifts stresses you out during the holiday season, then perhaps you, too, should try putting a hold on gift-giving. Talk to your family and get their buy-in. Tell them what I’ve told you: that you already have everything you need and that buying gifts may cause you or other family members to go into debt. You may find out that your family agrees with you… and you’ll be headed for a gift-free Christmas in 2008.
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Topics: Frugal Living |
3 Responses to “Skipping Gifts at Christmas”
Comments
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January 11th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
We basically did the same thing. My wife and I gave each other some token gifts of food (which we would have bought anyways).
Didn’t invest in gifts for anyone else. Couldn’t budget it. So we didn’t. No one even seemed to notice.
I’m the same way with socks.
And, yeah, happiness doesn’t take much. Free time. Buy me from time for Christmas!
January 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
What is it with guys and wearing old socks anyway?
Like you, it didn’t seem anybody noticed. After it’s all over, nobody remembers what they got from whom… or if they got anything at all.
It’s a byproduct of “toomuchstuffitis.”
January 15th, 2008 at 6:43 am
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