Christmas is about God and family and sharing your joy for this time of season with the ones you love. It's the one time of year where people tend to put their petty differences aside if just for a little bit. People tend to get too wrapped up in the commercialization of it; getting the most expensive thing, the most popular, spending X amount on this person. Screw that, you do what you can afford. Their have been times over the years where my friends and I didn't have much in the way of income, so we just baked stuff for each other; I had a friend last year who's an aspiring animator, sketch comic-esque porttraits of us. And you know what, I LOVED doing that when I didn't have much money...and my friends enjoyed getting brownies and cookies as well. I never got a s**load for Christmas myself...maybe around 4-6 presents each year; one main present and other smaller things; And when times got tough, my parents cut back and got us only 3 or so. I have a kid on the way myself, and me and my soon to be wife absolutely do not want to spoil him/her, so he/she can expect a modest Christmas like we ourselves had.
Why don't you just enjoy eachother's company? That's kind of the whole idea. I ****ing love Christmas. I don't care about gifts, I just like being with my family.
It ain't Christmas season yet, dammit. That starts the day after Thanksgiving you ignernt masses. btw: I love Christmas, Christmas music, decorations, real x-mas trees, shopping for gifts, egg nog (not so much but with enough brandy - hey!). When I was a kid we weren't well off so we got some presents but in our stockings we got nuts and fruit. My wife makes fun of me for that but we do it for our family now. It's about the traditions so lighten up. Get what you can afford because you can only make these memories for your kids once.
I've grown to really like the Christmas season over the last several years. I didn't really care for it that much growing up even though I always got tons of stuff. I don't know what happened over the last ten years or so that got me liking the holidays. The first Christmas I had with my first wife, she insisted that we buy every single person in each of our families an individual present even though we had virtually no money to spend. After the holidays, we got a really snide "thank you" note from my step-mother that immediately made my then-wife realize that some people just weren't worth it. So, we scaled back considerably for the next Christmas and easily settled into a routine that served us well for the next several Christmases that we were together. With my own kids, I was surprised at how much I could find for them without spending very much that I knew they'd enjoy. As they've gotten older, they tend to want just one big present (I got them iPods last year, for example), but before they entered their teen years, I could spend $25-$35 per kid and get what appeared to be a pretty significant haul. It just some effort and thinking. My only complaint now is that my current wife's birthday is December 11th, and she absolutely will not fall for the whole joint birthday/Christmas gift, meaning I have to come up with two things (the worst was the year she got her graduate degree in December, so I had to do three separate gifts).
Depending on how old your kids are you can buy multiple inexpensive gifts and not break the bank. Walmart can be your best friend come Christmas time. If you just show up with a DVD you might get the "what the fu*%" look that I got when I only bought my little brother (5 or 6 at the time) an educational book for Christmas one year. That's a look you never want to get....
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My parents were always great at giving my sister and I what we wanted each year. We were never selfish or needy kids, the things on our "lists" usually didn't add up to more than 30 or 40 bucks...my parents would always go out of their way to spend around 150 on each of us, 1 present from "mom and dad" and the rest of the gifts from "santa." There's nothing quite like watching those old Christmas morning videos now that I'm 20, it brings back such amazing memories. There was one xmas though after my dad was diagnosed with RA and had to buy his expensive meds...my parents went to the thrift store and got us a bunch of cheap stuff. I was told that years later, however...my sister and I didn't notice. We loved everything Santa gave us. One thing I can say from experience is that, when you're young, quantity > quality. More things to open, more fun on Christmas morn. Don't fault them, they're still in the Id stage. ;-)
Hey Bobble...sorry to hear about your baby's troubles. Buy a bunch of CPS at the dollar store. Cheap fun isn't just for grownups. At under 7 they don't necessarily need the pricey stuff...but it's still fun to open stuff up and play on Christmas morn. Don't know how many birthday parties I've seen a kid have more fun with a $2 ball than a $25 lego set. Good luck, man. I have the opposite problem....my kids birthdays are in January and there's already no room in the house for more toys!
They actual toys don't matter. Its about sitting around the tree when you are little and opening as many brightly colored packages as possible. Heck...Go to the dollar store and load up on coloring books, cheapy toys, candy, etc., and just wrap them individually. OR Kids still like hot wheels right? Wait until Walmart has a good special on them and get a bunch of different ones for under $1 each. Wrap them up, or make a big "grab bag" present with them. Fill that stocking up with fresh crayons (is there anything better than a fresh box of crayons), colored pencils, finger paint, coloring books, a fresh art tablet for kids, play doh, little plastic army men, the cheapo net bags of plastic yard toys I bet I could spend $25 a kid and get them 3-5 presents each they'd love to open up.
Christmas is really about family and having cool traditions. For kids, the gifts and the pagentry are part of the magic and should not be underestimated. I think it is a good idea to get kids lots of little gifts and one big gift, but I guess you can overboard on that, too. If you think Christmas is over-commercialized then maybe you can have a new family tradition where everybody makes at least one gift for each other, or have a family charitable donation, or act to celebrate. There are ways that you can make the holiday meaningful despite all of the econo-crap that is foisted on people.
Bobble, I feel for you, man - I really do, dude. Last Christmas, me and my parents made a deal where we didn't buy anything for each other for Christmas (my sister who is 3 years older than me refused to go along with that idea). This Christmas, my wife went out and bought all kinds of gifts for people in the family (she has a big family and it also includes mine). Our daughter is getting so much stuff, it will make your head spin. However, that is what Christmas is really about - it is for the kids. I have already talked with the wife that next year we are going to set a limit (moneywise) on how much stuff to get our daughter as the wife went way over that this year. And I hear you loud and clear about paying bills - I have my fingers crossed that we can get by this time without having late payments or running out of money or any of that other garbage. Oh and my wife loves playing Christmas music - she'll probably be playing it when I get home. Unless it is a Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack or Elvis singing Christmas songs or the Messiah, I'll pass on the Christmas music. I may write more about this later but that is all for now.
There's a very good chance that both Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to completely suck this year.
I don't know about everyone else, but I grew up in the '50's, in a working class neighborhood of WWII vets and their families, so everyone got pretty cheap gifts. If you got a new bike, that was probably your "big gift" for about 3 years, if you know what I mean. One year, the gift all the boys wanted was this small, black "tommie gun," with the round magazine, but maybe 20" long, at the most. You could pull a slide back on the side, and rattle off a "burst." They were less than 10 bucks, but that was what everyone wanted. We had more fun running around playing WWII with those things, and whatever stick looked good as a bazooka, or a heavy MG. You get the picture. How times have changed. I had so much fun, with so little, back then, and so much more personal freedom than the kids in my neighborhood, and my own kids today. We used to ride our bikes, literally for miles, with an, "OK, but you better be back for supper!" Halloween was just insane. Today, it's become a "ghost" of what it was, no pun intended. Times change, and we have all this technology, but are we really better off? More to the point, are our kids really better off? In far too many ways, I think not.
If your wife likes to give gifts this Christmas time even you don't have budget, don't blame it on Christmas, it's your wife. But if you really do have an extra money for it and you don't want to spend it, that means that you're greedy. Simple. I hate Christmas when I'm away from my family.
