Have Yourself a Frugal Little Christmas…

We’ve all done it – thought, “what the heck!” and squeezed the credit cards until they squeak to try and buy the very best Christmas that we can.

This year, I’m opting out.

Why?  Because I’ve finally figured out that there’s something intrinsically wrong with the phrase, “buy the very best Christmas”.  You can’t buy Christmas!  How ridiculous is THAT?  And yet we all try to do it, year after year.  We think that by spending more, we can have a better time – make it somehow more significant.  After speaking to several friends and family members, I’ve come to the conclusion that the years when we’ve had very little have often been our best times.

I remember my first Christmas away from home, and co-incidentally, the first that I spent with my husband-to-be.  We had no idea how to cook a turkey dinner, and spent two days before the day itself preparing vegetables, cooking slightly wonky sausage rolls and experimenting with various christmas pudding recipes.  We’d invited a couple of friends who were also spending the holiday on their own, and had a fabulous time.  We made crackers from toilet roll inners and shouted “BANG!” in best “Good Life” style when we pulled them.  We laughed like drains at the off-colour jokes I’d put in them, and downed an immoderate amount of VERY cheap booze.  It was *wonderful*.  We had hardly any money, and very little in the way of gifts (what there was had been bought by our long-suffering families), but we had the best time – I still smile when I remember it.

As we have become a little more affluent, we have fallen into the trap of spending money (often money that we didn’t have) to buy heaps and heaps of gifts for our children.  After a couple of years of this, I noticed that our son didn’t actually enjoy the day more when he received more gifts.  In fact, he seemed to get very stressed and tearful with each new gift that was opened.  All he wanted to do when he opened a gift was to play with it.  He would usually get halfway through tearing into the excessive packaging before someone else gave him another present.  Despite the fact that he had been given more  gifts, he just felt as though the opportunity to play with the one he’d just opened had been taken away, resulting in tears and tantrums.  Everyone ended up sad and upset, and a pall was invariably cast over the day.  However, now I think about it, the answer is pretty straightforward – why don’t we just buy *fewer* presents?  That way, there is time to play with everything and appreciate it fully before moving on to the next thing.  It’s what we’re going to do now, and I think it will lead to a nicer day.

Food.  Ah.  Food.  Really, how MUCH do we need?  I usually buy a turkey for the 25th, a joint of beef for the 26th, a huge ham for cold cuts and boxes and boxes of sweets.  But we never eat the Christmas pudding because we’re so full of turkey that we can’t manage it, and everyone eyes the beef and ham with unwilling eyes and an overflowing waistband.  The sweets do get eaten, but generally we feel sick afterwards and the children get so hyperactive that we are forced to discipline them into calming down.  Hoo boy.  Why not just, y’know, make less food?  There’s always enough to float a small battleship, and we’re only a family of four (with occasional visitors).  This year, we were lucky enough to be given a duck by a friend, so we may well have that on the 25th.  If I do buy a large joint of meat, I’ll make it last at least a couple of days, and intersperse it with some vegetarian meals as well.

So what do I plan on doing at Christmas?  Inspired by Talis Kimberley’s recent comments about the emotions that Midwinter was stirring in her, I am planning on spending time playing with my children, lighting the fire, making toast, knitting, crocheting, cuddling with my husband and feeding my chickens.  Family time and rejoicing.  That’s what it should be about…