give me your money instead
No gifts, just a card. And that still caught her off-guard, because she knows I’m opposed to materialism (for the sake of materialism; I still buy nice things for the things I need).
I know a guy who grew up occasionally homeless. He has ended up as a well paid tech manager and his approach is that his family can usually just afford the things they want, so instead of buying stress gifts the last month of each year, his family picks a charitable cause to donate time and money to instead.
They’ve bought goats for third world families; paid for education, transportation and home construction; fed hungry and clothed the naked.
He’s a cool guy.
Not ‘celebrating’ Christmas here.
Yesterday we had my wife’s parents over for diner, they areived at noon and left 4h later so the pets could be fed. Was fun to chat and have the rest of the day off. My sisters come tomorrow with kids. Haven’t had them around to visit for over a decade. We usually go to them, as some have pet allergies and we have loads of pets. Alas, I’m unable to leave town for a few months, so we haven’t seen them for a few months now, so they decided to drop by. No decoration apart from an paper ‘table cloth’ and some chrismas cookies for the kids to decorate.
When you normally see each other almost every month, why go trough all stress for the holiday season just because everybody celebrates a nice story. (is tricked into spending loads due to ‘tradition’) We had a not so simple meal with my inlaws (my wife liked to cook something special) and tomorrow it’s soup with sandwitches and pizza (the kids would want notuing fancy anyway and it’s easy for a big group).
No gifts, apart from each others company this year, although normaly we just dig inmfor the weeks and hide (with december being the only month in the year without birthdays). We already get to stressed about all the stress in/around the grocery that’s almost in our back yard.
This is why e-giftcards exist
