No gifts at Christmas? How do you do it?

[Anglyn]

The birthday thread got me thinking about this. Christmas just went by and I REALLY wanted to downplay the materialism. Well, but, I know my sil will buy for my kids, so I feel obligated to buy for hers, especially considering we appear to be more well off (we have land and own our house, but boy, thats why we are broke and behind all the time, but ppl dont see our outgo, they see a nice home, a few nice material things that were bought in the past when we had more disposable income and assume we are loaded or something). In my moms family, we draw names cuz there are so many of us but:

this last christmas I wanted to get just something small for everyone to keep costs down. Five to ten dollars on each niece and nephew, ten to twenty on each gift in our exchange, there are five of us so we had five gifts to buy. I kept it to about fifty to seventy five on each of our three, ten to twenty on fil etc. It seemed ok at the time but we spent over $600 and are still behind in feb. because of it! I mean Im behind on my house payments to accomadate everyone I felt obligated to buy for. Its ridiculous!! And my mom thinks its ok if you just keep it reasonable(she said, "its Christmas, I have to have a gift!), like ten to twenty bucks but multiply that by everyone Im buying for and it adds up quick!

I felt like I had to buy for my own kids or I was depriving them, but at one and two they dont know anyway and half of it they dont play with at all!

So, how do you deal with it if you dont "do" christmas? What do you say about why you wont be giving gifts? Because once I start , I cant stop, its like, well, if we get for dh's sisters kids, then we have to for my sisters kids etc. thenext thinhg you know, youre buying for everyone in the world.

Also, any ideas on things to DO rather than gifts? I grew up, thats what you DID on xmas morning, opened gifts, it was the whole point, what you looked forward to. I wouldnt feel so bad about no gifts, or just one or two gifts for my own kiddos, if we had something else that they looked forward to doing and that made the day special.

We dont even do the big family mean at xmas cuz everyone is wiped out from doing that at thanksgiving.

So, any ideas for homemade gifts, simple gifts, traditions that dont involve gifts at all would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[Storm Bride]

We do a huge gift exchange at my mom's, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but:

are there are a lot of Christmas lights in your neighbourhood? Maybe you could get up Christmas morning, and take your kids for a walk around to look at all the lights. I did that with ds1 and my oldest nephew on Christmas afternoon a couple of years ago, and they absolutely loved it.

Maybe you could get up and make a special Christmas breakfast? Involve the kids in it...or make Christmas cookies or something?

Also - don't know if you do stockings or not, but I think I actually looked forward to them more than the gifts on Christmas morning.

umm...can't think of anything else at the moment...

Of course, if you continue with gifts, there's always home-made stuff. I once did gifts for 24 people with $100.00...all candles.

[Czen:)]

do you live in a winter climate? Because I would love to get the kids up and go skiing for the morning and then come home to a wonderful crock pot meal. While the kids are to young for skiing most hills have tobogganing. We just took our family X-country skiing today and even our 2 year old skied! We also have a jogging stroller that has a ski kit so our 4 month old was in that. Four year old skied so fast I couldn't get ahead of her to get take a picture. It was great!

And as for gifts: we just told everyone no gifts anymore and that was that! We buy for our parents now and that is it. Some people bought for us a couple more times. I just said thank you and didn't reciprocate. We had already talked to them and we stuck with our decision. Honestly, I only have so much I can spend and I get so much pleasure buying my children and DH things I know they will enjoy that I gladly gave up buying small meaningless gifts for other people.

Czen

[Suzetta]

And as for gifts: we just told everyone no gifts anymore and that was that! ...Honestly, I only have so much I can spend and I get so much pleasure buying my children and DH things I know they will enjoy that I gladly gave up buying small meaningless gifts for other people.

Czen

I totally agree with this.

I have found that by being honest about it, most people are relieved to join me in my downsizing efforts. For the first year or two, it was difficult, but as the previous poster said, I just stuck to it and it got much easier.

I still buy for my grandma, but just a phone card or something that she can really use.

[myhoneyswife]

We don't do Chrismas (and we're Christians, so that's something that is hard for people to grasp). I do do a small something for family, like my MIL, parents, SIL. Last year I did home made vanilla, the year before I made logs of cookie dough for slice and bake cookies. We also don't do birthdays, but I send out cards out of respect for the people who do. I'm pregnant now, and we really want to raise our kids in a way so that they don't 'expect' something just because it's the day they were born on, or Christmas. I'd rather things come when the time is right, like a bike when the snow melts off when they're old enough to ride; an art set in the middle of winter to have something to do when it's bad weather; some kid gardening tools when we buy other stuff for planting. If you think about it, DH and I will buy what we want when it works into the budget and when it makes sense.

That's what we do...

Cara

[Beeblebrox]

I dislike all of the gifts and money that seem to surround christmas. So this year we told everyone that either we would do no gifts or, if they were willing, we would draw names. We weren't willing to buy something for everyone. Just can't afford that. So we drew names. We even put a price cap on it for everyone at about 20-30 bucks and couples were considered one. It made Christmas a lot easier.

[~pi]

We stopped exchanging Christmas gifts with large portions of my family when I was a kid. Instead we spent the day playing games, playing outside, cooking and baking, etc. We also volunteered at a soup kitchen once, went on a sleigh ride, and we sponsored a foster child as our, "Instead of gifts, let's put our money towards ..."

Now, my DH and I do exchange small gifts, but the main thing each Christmas are our annual letters. We write them on New Year's Eve and open them the following Christmas. We plan to keep that going with the babe once s/he arrives, although s/he may not be interested in reading it so much as chewing on it at first. :lol When we do gifts, we focus on homemade gifts a lot.

[KaraBoo]

I think it's something that must be approached slowly, for the children's sake. If they are accustomed to getting loads of "stuff" on Christmas, it may be disappointing for them no matter what your efforts.

For the past three years, I've tried to make these things more important than gifts in the Christmas season: decorating, baking, crafting, visiting friends. Also, we tend to buy things throughout the year, not saving purchases for "special" occasions. So there isn't a lot of pressure and tension surrounding gifts.

Good luck!

[*Lisa*]

...but the main thing each Christmas are our annual letters. We write them on New Year's Eve and open them the following Christmas.

Would you be willing to share a little more about these? What sorts of things do you write?

Thanks :)

[~pi]

Would you be willing to share a little more about these? What sorts of things do you write?
Sure, no problem. The letters are usually between one and three pages. We do a sort of year in review, e.g. "This has been a wonderful year in so many ways. I really enjoyed when we ..." We write a few romantic/loving things (how much the other person means to us, things about them that made the year wonderful, etc.) and then if we have specific plans for the upcoming year, we write about those, e.g. "If all continues to go well, this time next year you will be finished your degree and will be ..." or "If all continues to go well, this time next year we will have a third person celebrating the holidays with us. I'm so looking forward to parenting with you because ..."

It was really fun to read this past year's letter because the year before, we had both been thinking about TTC but hadn't told each other yet, so this past Christmas, when I was three months pg, we both got to read, "I'm really hoping that in the coming year, we will talk about starting a family ..."

We have a special book that we tuck the letters in during the year in which we are waiting to read them (it's a Vector Calculus textbook ... long story :lol) and a handmade wooden box that was given to us a wedding gift that we keep them in afterwards.

I kind of got the idea from something that we did for one or two years when I was a kid. We had these little mini-basket ornaments that we hung on the tree. One year, my mom had all six of us write little notes to each other on Christmas Eve and then we put each person's note in a basket for them. It was the highlight of Christmas morning to read them.

[montsmama]

We have had our second gift-less Christmas. We told our families in advance. One side was all for it, the other side was more reluctant. We made a card that said en lieu of gifts we had made a donation to a specific non-profit. The non-profit supported care for individuals who were experiencing an illness that someone in our family had faced. i think this helped our families realize that we weren't just being cheap, but that we really wanted to downsize the event.
This year we also went away at Christmas (just the three of us) and that helped to avoid the sitting around the tree focused on gifts activity. The going away helped to focus on being together and enjoying each other rather than what everyone had bought us.

[Sharlla]

So, how do you deal with it if you dont "do" christmas? What do you say about why you wont be giving gifts?

We say, we don't celebrate xmas (because we aren't xian and because we don't agree with the blantant commercialism) which means that we don't give, nor do we accept gifts. We also don't buy a tree or make a dinner. To us, there is nothing special about Dec. at all. That is the way I like it.

Regardless, every single year I have to go through this with MIL, she says "well, i'm going to give them gifts 2 days before xmas" and I say "no your not, you don't buy them crap all year long, why do you feel compelled to do so right before xmas when you know full well that we don't celebrate" It's extremely frustrating.