I do enjoy giving small handmade gifts as a thank you/appreciation gift. I direct a co-op and like to give to those on our steering team and I like making little things for the ladies in my book club like book marks. I have a few people I will take baked goods to…but again it is something I enjoy and do not expect anything in return. I am starting to grow weary of gift exchange parties. I agonized over one party like this where the gifts needed to be good ones. I had to go…but it robs a lot of the joy of anticipation of being with friends.

One thing I have decided this year is that I will no longer participate in charities that require gift giving to strangers. I would rather give the money or food or toiletries…that sort of thing.

Thanks for posting this. I have printed it out and will reread it tonight. I like thinking about these things.

Merry Christmas!

I do like each of the individual components — shopping, giving, baking, attending events. But it does increase the pressure when it all comes at once on top of the other everyday duties of life. We’ve scaled back in various ways different years. I really like giving something to a wide variety of people, but it does add to the financial aspect as well as the pressure. We pretty much only give to our immediate family — kids and grandparents — and one or two special friends any more. Most of the nieces and nephews are grown and married with kids of their own, quadrupling the extended family. So we don’t usually give to siblings, nieces, etc. anymore, but one thing that made a really nice gift was when my family brought up a whole box full of pictures for us to sort through. As oldest I got all the “family history” ones, and my son scanned and touched them up, and we put them all on a CD for everyone. It took him a lot of time to retouch them all (though he had the time that year), but once it was all done it wasn’t time-consuming or expensive to reproduce them.

I do enjoy that. But a couple of times this year I’ve wondered what it would be like if we all agreed to give each other just our time/presence one year — kind of a material gifts fast. I just wonder what it would be like, and what would grow up into the space.

My brother and sister and I agreed several years ago that we wouldn’t buy gifts for each other. We do draw names for the children: I have two children, so I draw names of two nieces or nephews, and we get gifts for them.

Some relatives understand scaling back, and others don’t. Polly’s word “unapologetic” is on my mind these days, too.

I do enjoy giving things, even if they’re homemade or small.

One year I rang bells at Walmart. I was struck by the goodwill of the season too, there where it should have been so stressful. I was also struck by how many parents wanted to give their children the experience of dropping change in the kettle. It was neat.

On my side, we used to only exchange gifts for the children, but now that they are all nearly adults we’ve agreed to stop.

The other fortunate thing is that we live at a time when the tide is changing, at least amongst Christians. It is not so difficult to explain to a friend “We’re trying to focus on Christ during Christmas and not so much on shopping and gift buying.” And, usually they would understand.

The wonder of Christmas- it has amazed me over the years to notice the wonder, general peace and goodwill of the Christmas season to be more prevalent among unbelievers than believers. I am pondering this myself this year.