Christmas – that delightful time of year when we bankrupt ourselves again by buying hundreds of presents for people we neither like nor see more than once a year, buy toys nobody will ever use, drown in a sea of wrapping paper, waste more food than a bun-fight in a Tudor banquet and add thousands of tons of plastic to the world’s landfill. Joy!
It doesn’t need to be like this. Every family has a budget, and the only budget you need to stick to, is yours.
Yes, the pressure from children to have The Latest Must-Have Toy can be immense, but at the end of the day (or monthly credit card statement) you know how much you can afford, and if you can’t afford the Latest Must-Have Toy, then you can’t buy it. The end.
So what if the Jones’ have the latest electronic gizmo that is fractionally different to last year’s electronic gizmo? Maybe they can afford it. Or maybe they are just further in debt than they were last year.
Only you know what works for you and your family’s bank balance, so be sensible and stick within budget.
Having a relatively calm, fuss-free Christmas can make the whole thing much more enjoyable anyway; children simply cannot cope with huge numbers of presents, and expecting them to be grateful for it or appreciate any of it, is very unfair on them.
Same goes for food; we don’t need to eat and eat and eat all day every day for a week. And that’s before we throw in the brandy, port, wine and champagne. No wonder we all hit January feeling awful!
Wrapping paper doesn’t have to be bought every year either; re-use last year’s, or be creative with brown paper, newspaper with lovely ribbons, tissue paper that shops wrap things up in, old maps that you don’t need any more, and so on. It makes for a really unusual look, that is almost as special as the present itself.
Try to keep it really simple this year, cut down on waste, have a lovely time giving and receiving some presents and preparing and eating good food – but not to such an extent that the whole event is overwhelmingly stressful, exhausting and expensive.
It’s completely unnecessary, and unhelpful.
Anyway, it leaves you with a little to spare when the January sales start (which, by the way, is on the 26th December these days….) when you can treat your children to that Latest Must-Have Toy, for half the price it was the week before. Genius.
Merry (simple) Christmas!
What It Takes to Have a Fuss-Free Christmas
Christmas - that delightful time of year when we bankrupt ourselves again by buying hundreds of presents for people we neither like nor see more than once a year, buy toys nobody will ever use, drown in a sea of wrapping paper, waste more food than a bun-fight in a Tudor banquet. Joy!
