The first year my husband and I were together, I remember going shopping for Christmas presents for just about everybody we knew. Family, friends, coworkers… we did some serious shopping. We did most of it at outlet stores and off-retail places, but we did a lot of shopping. A few years later we hosted my husband’s parents for Christmas, and we had just bought our first home earlier that year. So we put up a tree and strung lights all over our house, and bought lots of presents. My husband told me later that he nearly fell off the two-story roof onto the picket fence below, so the next year we just put lights on our porch railing. We’ve gradually been scaling down Christmas around here for the last several years, and it just keeps getting better and better.
This year, I made ornaments for our nieces (something I do every year, and our nieces really like their homemade ornaments). I also made some blocks for a friend’s daughter, and a small scrapbook for my mother in law. The week before Christmas we went to visit an elderly friend who is in a rehab facility following a broken hip. We spend some time just sitting and talking with him, and it seemed to bring him a lot of happiness. We put together a basket of food for him, including some homemade soup that we took to his house and stashed in the freezer so it would be there when he got out of the rehab facility. On Christmas day, we went to my parents’ house for dinner with the whole family, and took along some homemade treats.
That’s all that we did for Christmas, and it was wonderful. No decorations, no shopping, no hoping that UPS would get a last-minute gift somewhere on time. No holiday craziness at all. We opened our gifts from my husband’s parents on December 23rd (my brother and sister visited on the 24th, and we were at my parents’ on the 25th, so the 23rd made sense). In true toddler fashion, our son enjoyed the wrapping paper most of all, and a pair of dad-sized gloves.
I know a lot of people get a bit bummed after Christmas is over. It makes sense if you think about it… there’s so much build up and anticipation surrounding the holiday. People shop for weeks (and months!), make all sorts of plans, wrap presents, count down the days of December… and then it’s over. Advent calendars always seem a bit odd to me – aren’t the first 24 days of December just as good as the 25th? Why would we want to bypass them and count them down? It’s like wishing your life away with a fancy, decorated calendar. And of course there’s the financial stress that so often comes after Christmas is over, when all the credit card bills roll in.
For us, Christmas was just like any other day, except we got to go have dinner with my parents and siblings. We didn’t spend any more money in December than we do in any other month, and we didn’t have any holiday stress. If you truly love the commercial celebration of Christmas, then by all means, have at it. But so often I hear people talking about how much they hate the commercialization and stress that go along with Christmas. If that’s the case, you don’t have to keep doing it the same way you’ve done it in the past. Make the holidays a time to relax and enjoy your friends and family instead of a time to spend money and stress yourself out. It can be done, and my own experience is that it’s a whole lot better this way.
I hope you’re all having a great holiday season, and that the things you do to celebrate truly bring you peace and joy.
Alissa says
Hey Frugal Babe,
Sounds like you had a lovely, enjoyable Christmas. :)
We seem to downgrade a bit each year, too. We’ve come to realize that the kids really don’t need much “stuff”. We’ve pretty much stopped buying for extended family. We try to give homemade gifts whenever we can. And it’s been a couple of years since I’ve stepped foot in a mall over the holiday season – that in itself is bliss!! I’m also inspired by Sheri over at Green and Crunchy, her family skips out on the holiday altogether! I’m not sure I could convince my family to do that, but the important thing is that we emphasize togetherness, and not the commercialism. :)
Alissa
Anne says
Congratulations on finding a balance that works for you and your family! We all need to make courageous decisions like you did to stay sane. For anyone thinking ahead to holiday season 2010 but not sure how to cut down the holiday craziness, I posted a time and expense worksheet on my blog today that provides options to save time or money on holiday preparations. http://www.beruly.com/?p=509
Zella says
Advent calendars are chocolate! Seriously, we do them annually because chocolate advent calendars are one of my favorite traditions from childhood. It’s not counting down/wishing away the days– it’s chocolate every day and goofy fun to see what the shape is.
I think the season is about making traditions that you enjoy, not about skipping things for the sake of skipping them. We have advent calendars, Christmas Eve lasagna, Christmas Day cinnamon buns and a few other ridiculous things that we look forward to every year.
gypsie says
We didnt do Christmas this year for the most part. My younger brother passed away at the age of 24 just three weeks ago so there wasn’t really a desire to do anything this holiday season. We sent gifts to my husband’s parents and nieces and that was it. Of course we did talk to the family on that day, but it was mostly sadness. we didnt decorate. We didn’t buy each other gifts. We did purchase ourselves a Sony PS3 for blu-ray movies, games, and netflix streaming but that was something we had discussed purchasing for a while. Also, we placed the subfloor and floor of our kitchen, laundry, and half bath.
DJ says
I love this post, it reminds me that my efforts at scaling down are worth it! My family are quite pragmatic when it comes to Christmas gifts – we all agree that we have quite enough stuff, and if we need things we can buy them ourselves, so token gifts or vouchers to our favourite stores are what we appreciate the most. But my husband’s family are very big on Christmas – stockings, gifts, Santa gifts, etc – and so I was happy to have budgeted enough in advance to meet those demands this year, plus we bought a lot of gifts second-hand or from ebay thereby keeping it personal and unique, keeping out of the shops and keeping our budget down! Next year I hope to scale it down more with homemade chutneys and gifts!
Cindy Brick says
I guess I’m the freakish one here…I actually did more this year than last! But it was mostly in decorating, using things we already had, and getting rid of the beat-up molting wreaths, etc. I’d been storing (and not using). Both daughters got some of the nice stuff I couldn’t use, and when I take the tree down on Monday, they’ll each get a shoebox full of decorations for next year!
Granted though, my dad was extremely sick last year (he died last Feb), and it was really difficult to get in the mood to decorate at all last Christmas. This one was filled with more recovery — and hope.
Babe, you haven’t mentioned it for a bit — how are your cold frames and other veggie growing plans doing? My daughter just gave me a hydroponic set for Christmas, and I am really looking forward to following your lead on this. Any suggestions for good plants to grow, especially tomatoes?
Frugal Babe says
Gypsie, I’m ever so sorry for your loss. I hope that 2010 is a better year for you.
Cindy Brick, About the cold frames… they were doing great until December when we had a really cold snap (down to -10F most nights for almost two weeks straight). That was a bit much for our greens, even in the cold frames. A lot of them froze, but the swiss chard have come back (they grow like weeds). The mustard greens and kale haven’t recovered yet, but we’ll see… We have some new greens growing under lights in in our basement, and will move them out to the cold frames once they’re a little stronger. We’re in the middle of another really cold snap, so we’ll wait until that’s over. Good luck with your hydroponic garden!