Christmas without Presents

The great recession that occured between 2007 and 2009 and brought the U.S. economy to its knees & changed how I think about stuff….about buying and keeping "stuff”. The recession had a profound effect on the country and the world and to some extent helped drive the "live simply” movement and the tiny house craze. I was fascinated with the tiny house concept until I downsized and found out that a little space is a nice thing but that’s a different story. Despite my lack of current interest in tiny houses I do have a heightened awareness about how much stuff we have and about our holidays and how commercial they are. From Valentine’s Day to Easter to Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas we are bombarded with advertising.

Everyone is competing for our money. Stores start putting up the next holiday celebration items before we even finish celebrating the last holiday. We run around buying stuff and forget why we celebrate in the first place. At Christmas we go from store to store (online or brick and mortar) using up any free time we have buying things for friends and neighbors and family... striving to get the perfect gift for everyone we know being terrified that they might not like what we bought and if that happens we have somehow failed.

This year we decided to try something different. Our twenty eight year old daughter actually came up with the idea. Her birthday is on November 29th and she suggested that we all take a cruise instead of exchanging presents. Terry and I have birthdays on December 17th and 19th and our wedding Anniversary is on the 8th and looking at the bigger picture we decided that this idea was just plain brilliant. We could have an adventure with our kids and focus on family fun and skip the traffic and lines at the stores and reduce the stress and experience Christmas without the distraction of shopping.

We booked our cruise for the week before Christmas. I told my parents that we weren’t going to buy gifts this year. Mom was relieved because the thought of buying gifts overwhelmed her. She’s been dealing with my disabled brother and my Dad who has dementia and has enough on her plate. With Mom’s buy-in we were now totally committed. We told the kids and our siblings about our plan and for the next several weeks we thoroughly enjoyed going about our business every day without thinking about who to get what. I’d go by stores jammed with cars and think….”I’m so glad I’m not in there waiting in line.” We relished the holiday season. We picked up the real Christmas tree, decorated it and put up lights and bought some pine scented candles….getting in the spirit. We were still celebrating after all… just not celebrating with gift giving. It was a glorious few weeks.

Our cruise started on December 16th and ended on December 23rd. Click here to read about that trip and the things we learned. We traveled with Terry’s adult son (my step son) and his girlfriend our twenty eight year old daughter and our nineteen year old son. We went to Nassau, Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten. We ate lots of food, did some gambling, saw some shows and visited some cool places, and I think a good time was had by all. I would be lying if I didn’t mention that we had some tense family moments and frustrations during the trip… and I was to blame for some of them but I won’t bore you with the details. Like most families, our family isn’t perfect but the good news is that we all love each other and there were lots of good times and we made some great memories.