How do you do presents at Christmas? Are you terrified at the thought of spending so much money, or do you love the chance to be generous to those closest to you? Do you like finding out what people want and buying those things, or do you like to guess and give surprise gifts? And on Christmas day do you open them all at once in a big rush, or do you like to space them out throughout the day?
So many options, but one thing’s for sure – there’ll be a lot of present-giving on Christmas Day! There’s a lovely new Christmas Guest Article out on the A Rocha Living Lightly website, written by Dr Ruth Grayson, talking about what she calls ’50/50 giving’. Do take a look – I’d love to know what you think about it. Is there something in what she’s saying that we could take on board this year?
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In answer to your questions: Yes, yes. Yes and not so much. We open one on Christmas Eve, the rest on Christmas morning. I liked Ruth’s idea of 50/50 giving, but I think it doesn’t take it far enough, when you consider American’s spend $450 billion on Christmas. Half of that is still obscene. You might be interested in AdventConspiracy.org’s work.
I (not necessarily my family, I am sort of dragging them behind me) have been on this bent for a few years to undo this terrible thing that Christmas has become in our family. So we started with putting a $100 per person spending limit in place. Now this year we’re trying NOTHING NEW FOR CHRISTMAS, a little slogan I made up to guide our shopping. Presents need to be homemade, hand-made (by others), second-hand or consumables or local services. Supports the local economy, costs us much less, easy on the earth… a win/win/win as I see it. (The Chinese probably see it differently.)
I love that, Donna, thank you. I think it’s a real challenge when you see it in a particular way but others in the family don’t. I find that hard.
This year it seems particularly inappropriate to spend on yet more stuff so the friends/family with whom I am spending Christmas decided on a ‘secret Santa’ plan. We have each written a list of things that we would really appreciate, with a specified price limit and have randomly selected one name for whom we will buy a gift. The only exception is a very new baby because we all want to give presents to her! (Though she will probably play with the wrapping paper…). It feels very different from piles of presents under the tree but much less profligate. Thankfully everyone is happy with it but it makes for interesting discussions with other people.