This holiday, with the recession causing many individuals to cut their Christmas spending and tighten their seasonal belts, it might be a good time to consider having a thriftier rendition of the traditional decadent Christmas. It is possible to have a wonderful Christmas season without spending very much money. We have compiled a simple recession gift guide to a money-free Christmas.
Rethink Store Bought Gifts
Gifts, for many people are the centrepiece of Christmas. For some strange reason, many North Americans feel they must show their love by purchasing gifts made in questionable conditions in developing countries and then shipped thousands of miles to local big box stores and malls. Aside from being incredibly wasteful and carbon dioxide emission intensive, the low price tags on these gifts hide the steep costs, both social and environmental, of their production. Many of these cheaper goods are purposely designed and produced to have a very short lifespan.
Resist the urge to buy heavily discounted cheaper quality gifts, with their built in obsolescence, when times are tight and instead consider rethinking the cheap store-bought goods paradigm.
Go Gift Free
The first option is to consider going gift free this holiday season. Forget cutting back or minimizing annual Christmas debt load, instead consider going gift free. Frankly, would it cause any of us serious damage to have one Christmas with no gifts? One Christmas without all the waste, the wrapping paper, the goods produced in developing nations and the carbon dioxide emissions generated from trips to the mall and shipping cheap products from their country of origin. The Buy Nothing Christmas movement, started by Canadian Mennonites, offers an alternative to the current Christmas overspending and overconsumption of middle-class North Americans.
House-mine
The ancient art of house-mining, or re-gifting, refers to finding something in your home to give as a gift. These gifts are not expected to masquerade as something ‘brand-new’, but rather are gifts that represent something you cherish. Most friends and family members have probably admired something in your home at one time or another and will be grateful to receive an object they have been not so secretly coveting for some time.
Homemade Gifts
Giving a simple homemade gift will often be much more appreciated then a store bought gift. Consider making cookies, a pie, a quiche, candies, liquors, chocolates, scarves, mittens, bath salts, holiday ornaments or wreaths.
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Actually, I've been practicing this for years now. Gifts that I received which are not useful to me but may be useful for others were re wrapped and place in a beautifully made Christmas Hampers
and viola! I already have a gift to a friend.
written by ChristmasHampers , September 26, 2010