The holiday season should be about spending time with family and friends. Instead, we've turned the holiday season into an excuse to go on a gigantic shopping spree.
It's time to just say "no" to mindless shopping. It's time to say "Enough" to going into debt because of your holiday spending.
Some suggestions:
- Plan only pot-luck dinners. That way no one is stuck with making all the food.
- Use homemade decorations. Use your children's artwork. One person I know makes a collage of greeting cards on the wall. Use inexpensive, festive LED lights.
- Make homemade gifts of cookies, fudge, jams, anything.
- Give "gift certificates" of things that you can do for someone close to you -- a 30-minute massage, a lesson on how to make homemade pizza dough, etc. You can use a simple program like Microsoft Works to create elaborate gift certificates.
- Plan a "white elephant" gift exchange. According to wikihow, "White elephant gifts are traditionally gifts considered extremely tacky, or that do not fit the tastes of the recipient ... The thought behind a white elephant gift exchange is to give everyone a chance to rid themselves of these tacky gifts--and invariably gaining a new one!"
- Or, if you prefer to exchange new gifts, set a maximum cost. Say, $20. That way, no one need bankrupt themselves.
- Or draw names by putting everyone's name in a hat. Everyone draws one name, and that's the person you buy for. Everyone gets a gift. Nobody is excluded.
- Take photos of your get-togethers with a digital camera. Upload them to an online photo album and send the links to your family and friends who attended the get-together.
- Give compassion. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or to deliver meals for homebound seniors. Donate to a charitable organization that your loved ones and friends care about. Give to Race for the Cure for breast cancer research, or Doctors Without Borders, or Habitat for Humanity. Give so someone else can live longer and have more holiday seasons to enjoy.
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