I was watching Christmas with the Kranks starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis (who quit acting October 9, 2006).
The whole point of the show was to show how difficult it is for people to stop celebrating Christmas in today's culture. The peer pressure from family, friends, coworkers, and store merchants to buy gifts, and Christmas cards is so overwhelming that they caved in and probably spent more money than they should have. Mom and Pop Krank caved in when their daughter Blair Krank came home to visit with her new fianc?.CHRISTMAS IS BAD FOR YOUR DEBT SITUATION!
If you looked at Christmas in purely a financial and credit /debt light it doesn't really make sense.
Let's ask the following questions to prove my point:
- Can you buy Christmas gifts using only money in your current bank account? ie.. not take out any savings of any kind.
- Do you spend the rest of the year (or longer) paying for Christmas gifts you've put on your credit card?
- Did you suffer stress and anxiety worrying about those credit card debts?
- Did you regret buying all of those gifts on credit since you knew you were going to pay for them mentally, emotionally and physically for a long time?!!
I was excited for the Kranks as they tried to buck the system and save half the money ($6,100) they spent the year before. They were going spend $3,000 on a cruise and $600 for charitable donations.
CHRISTMAS IS A RICH FAMILY TIME OF YEAR
What are the alternatives to spending money on Christmas gifts?
Faith Today website gives the following suggestions for saving money and alternatives to gift giving at Christmas presents.
From a recent news story:
Giving More by Giving Less
It takes only a bit of creative thinking to come up with alternatives to excessive consumerism. Some ideas:
- Students at Trinity Western University [Langley, BC, Canada] set up a free store, bringing things they didn't need and trading with each other.
- One family does a "make or bake" among siblings, exchanging names and producing one homemade gift each.
- Some families now include sponsoring a child overseas or providing a goat or chickens for a micro-enterprise as a means of teaching their children to reach out to others. Or they help out at a soup kitchen or deliver Christmas hampers together.
- Time is often a bigger gift than money. Creating coupons that offer free babysitting or housecleaning, a neck massage or a special treat can mean more than a stocking stuffer.
- Offer to teach someone a skill you have.
- Write a poem, tell a story, draw a picture or take a photograph and present it in a creative way.
- Give fairly traded coffee, tea or chocolate, get beautiful items at garage sales or buy gifts from shops that support artisans in poorer countries.
- Make your own cards from recycled paper.
- Avoid commercial wrapping paper, ribbons, bows and tape, which are not recyclable, and opt for gift bags, tea towels or nice boxes, which are eco-friendly.
From an article by Debra Fieguth in Faith Today, Nov/Dec 2004.
Here are a few more websites that I found that share the joy of not running up debts on Christmas.
MY FINAL THOUGHT ON THE MATTER
If you can afford to buy Christmas gifts and it causes you no pain, have fun buying all the Christmas gifts you can. If you're going to put your Christmas gifts on your credit card, and know you'll be stressed out by the debt associated with purchasing Christmas gifts, don't do it. It's just that simple.
Christmas time is ultimately for sharing time with family and friends. That's where the richness lies.
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