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I love Christmas! I love the weather and the baking and shopping and the giving and the decorations, I love it so much that I start listening to Christmas music in September. Unfortunately, in years past, that love turned into something else . . . debt. My favorite holiday had turned into a night where we felt guilty for spending too much, for not having enough gifts under the tree. I spent more time worrying about how we were going to finance Christmas than I spent enjoying it.
Seven years ago, we realized that we couldn’t continue this way so we made a commitment to each other; we committed to stop the cycle of debt we found ourselves in the middle of every holiday season. We promised that we wouldn’t create debt in order to give someone a gift. Giving gifts is a selfless act, something you do because you want to make the other person feel good. Going into debt in order to give a gift isn’t selfless, it’s selfish and more about wanting to make yourself feel good.
Whenever I think of Christmases past, I keep thinking back to “the painting incident.” One Christmas, we bought a painting for a relative. Relative expressed happiness with the painting, but we never saw it in their house. Flash forward a few years and the painting is now gracing the wall of another relative. Re-gifted! Am I offended or upset? Not at all; a gift is yours to do whatever you want with. What I’m really upset about is the fact that we used a credit card to pay for that painting.
I always felt a sort of pressure in the gift-giving department. When I was growing up, it was just my family as we lived in the middle of the woods we had to drive 2 hours to find the nearest relative. Sure, my grandmother usually came over for the holiday, but for the most part it was just the 5 of us. My parents bought us gifts (A LOT of gifts!) and we kids would buy everyone something from the school bazaar. We’d finish a few hours of opening gifts and, just when we were starting to cart them to our rooms, my dad would bust in the front door with more presents and yell “It’s not over yet!!”
I was just 20 years old when I moved several states away from my family. The first Christmas in Florida was so different from what I was used to. My husband has a huge family and at the time almost all of them lived in Florida, and many of those who didn’t would visit for the holiday. Jason’s mother & aunt would bake for weeks and, on Christmas day, we’d go to a family gathering that sometimes topped 100 people. Exchanging gifts was a huge ordeal and everyone brought a present for everyone else, even 3rd cousins and ex-whatever-in-laws. One year my husband was laid off from his job shortly before Christmas, but we still had a big Christmas, 100% financed by credit cards.
The Christmas after the lay-off, we had moved to a new state and for the first time in our marriage we didn’t have family nearby. We wanted to make up for the loneliness by showering our children with a lot of expensive gifts. We were only in Georgia for two years but our desire to overspend was so bad that my husband had to get a 2nd job one year just to pay for the gifts we wanted to buy the kids.
Eventually we moved back to Florida flat-broke and Christmas was forever changed. That first Christmas back in Florida, we couldn’t buy our children anything; friends and relatives stepped in and provided a Christmas for the kids. I’ll never forget being called to my children’s school one afternoon to find out that they had gathered several bags of presents to give us to put under the tree. I drove home stunned, I cried for at least an hour. I was beyond grateful for the kindness exhibited by the school and community, but I was ashamed at the same time. Something had to change. We had to change the meaning of the season for our family, which meant we had to redefine Christmas.
Christmas these days has taken on a whole new meaning. We still give gifts, we just give them differently. We make gifts for extended family, mostly of the edible type. The kids and I make crafts for them to give others, the older kids and I put together fun baskets from things we buy at the dollar store.
When it comes to buying gifts for extended family we do pirate exchanges or draw names. For our children, we buy one large family gift and a few well thought out gifts for each child. Last year we were able to give the kids a dream gift, but we saved for almost 3 years so we could pay for it with cash. There will be no dream gift this year, but that’s alright and we’re content because
We’ve learned that giving gifts should be about the recipient, not the gifter.
We’ve learned that you can’t appease feelings of guilt by giving extravagant gifts.
We’ve learned that a gift from the heart isn’t financed at 20% interest.
We’ve learned that we are content with so much less than we thought we wanted.
We all still love Christmas. In fact, I think we love it more than we did before. We take the time to be intentional now. We listen to Christmas carols on the radio, we bake together, we spend time with each other. My children can’t stop talking about how we get to dig out the decorations in a few days. I can’t stop smiling over the anticipation of the holiday, and the anticipation has nothing to do with gifts.