Re-Thinking Christmas -Does Giving Mean Spending?

With the holidays looming, it won't be long until stores are putting up the Christmas trees and hanging the lights. Each year, Christmas is the number one shopping season and the retail business scores their biggest sales period of the year. My family decided not to buy into that this year, and we made a plan to do things differently.

Christmas wasn't meant to be this way. Whatever your religious beliefs, Christmas is a religious holiday. However, as the years have gone on, it has gotten to be more about enriching the stores than enriching our lives. My mother gave a perfect example of that last year when I asked what she would like us to buy her for Christmas, and she replied with a sigh, "There is nothing I need. Don't get me anything." She wasn't just being nice. The exhaustion in her voice spoke volumes. Living on a fixed income, she scrimps and saves for months to buy Christmas presents that are not needed and are quickly forgotten by the recipients.

What is this holiday season suppose to be about anyway? Giving to others, right? And what do we need at Christmas? For our family, it would be to have spend some enjoyable time with each other, enjoy a nice meal together, and start out our new year without added debt or empty savings accounts. That is what we need. That is what most people I've talked to say they need.

Gallup reports that each year when they do their Christmas polls, the majority of Americans say they plan to spend less than they spent last year. Each year, they spend more.

A friend of mine inspired me last year when she took her large family to a rustic mountain cabin for Christmas. They popped popcorn over the fire, strung berries and made tin foil ornaments to decorate their tree, and each gave one gift to go under the tree that they had made with their own hands. The gifts included cookies that the children had made, paper dolls and storybooks made and illustrated by Mom, and little "pinewood derby" racing cars made and painted by Dad. She said the children said it was the best Christmas they had ever had and a memory they will always have to cherish.

She got the idea from something her grandfather said about the best Christmas he ever had was during the Great Depression.

We discussed this in our family, and decided to draw names. Each person will receive one gift, chosen off a list they provide of three possible gifts they would like to have. We set a limit of $35 dollars on the gifts. This way each person will be able to unwrap one gift from under the tree. It was interesting to note that our family members had a terrible time trying to come up with three things they wanted. In our family, most things we really want, we buy throughout the year as the need arises. Some of us listed gift cards, which is another way of saying, "I don't need anything, but in case I do later, you can give me a card to use then."

When we shared this idea with family members, I wasn't surprised to see the relief they had. No one, no matter what their income, seems to be able to truly afford the Christmas seasons they have been financing each year. This is especially true as our family grew and we were blessed with new members.

Christmas has never been my favorite holiday, because usually it is more exhausting than enjoying, but I have found this year, I have more enthusiasm for Christmas because of our idea of limiting gifts. I actually am enjoying planning Christmas dinner, games we can enjoy together, places we can visit to see the Christmas lights, and movies we can watch. It's much easier to enjoy the time we spend doing things together when everyone isn't worried about how they are going to pay January's credit card bills.

This idea might not work for your family, especially if you have small children. We don't have grandchildren yet, but I even have a plan for when we are blessed with that. The adults can draw names, and then bring an extra gift along for each child, even if it's only a storybook or puzzle. However, it should be something that person can spend some time doing with that child. I hope our future grandchildren will look back on our family Christmas's together and realize what they received here may not have been piles of expensive gifts, but there was a lot of love to go around.

So when the stores put up the trees and the advertisements hit the newspapers enticing you to buy more and more this year, remember what people really need. You can't go wrong with love.