‘Frugal’ Christmas

The way M and I celebrate Christmas has always been very commercialised and very different to how I was brought up. We spend so much on the little ones (nephews & nieces). I have been pushing for a different way of celebrating Christmas for a few years now but we both always got swept up by all the excitement and ended up over spending year after year. M finally, albeit reluctantly, decided to give it a go this year.

Of course I am overjoyed at his decision but M prefers that I keep my feelings to myself. I win but I am asked to celebrate privately. LOL. Christmas shopping is now a touchy topic. He is worried that our change is too radical and there might be a dummy spitting episode on Christmas day. We are going to explain that we changed because we are worried about the impact of the current global financial crisis in the coming New Year. The crisis is indeed frightening but there is one other reason and we have decided to keep it private for now. We are also hoping that people are so happy with Santa Rudd’s recent money gifts that they don’t realise that Santa M didn’t cough up a tonne of gifts.

I may have successfully convinced M to change the way we celebrate Christmas this year but I don’t think I am the Grinch. It’s not like I am totally against buying presents. We just buy less. Instead of individual presents, we buy each group a gift card plus a hamper. Gift cards are great because they offer more flexibility and the group can come together to discuss what to purchase. And since M was willing to make the change, I am willing to also make a compromise. M preferred each hamper to be filled with products/junk food from shops like Haigh’s and Suga, and I am ‘happy’ to oblige. Just by changing our ways a little, we are saving at least 40-50% of what we would have normally spent on gifts at Christmas time. If we can keep this up next year and then the year after that, we sure will be on the road to celebrating our future Christmases in less commercialised ways. A permanent change would be really nice. As mentioned before, there is an important reason why we need to achieve this and I wish to share it with the world one day, just not now. Let’s just say that cultivating such a good habit now will make things easier to handle in the near future.