Frugal Christmas
Christmas! Christmas! Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!
One word that carries so much! One holiday so full of warmth and cheer that it spills over in abundance till every nook and cranny of our homes and nook and cranny of our souls is pleased and content and laughing. Or this is how it should be, right? For many of us, this holiday is filled with dread or worry. We live in a broken, fallen world where even the greatest moments of eucatastrophe for all humanity are twisted, corrupted, or forgotten. For some of us, it may not be past trauma that mars the day, but the budget—either monetary or energy—you’re facing. There may not be a whole lot of wiggle room for extra things. The money is tied up in the ever-mounting cost of groceries and the energy budget is strapped by a new pregnancy or health issues. All you see in this rich holiday is less and less.
Don’t lose heart, oh HearthKeepers. Lift up your heads and breathe. Buy into the magic of the season. The real magic. You can do this. We can do this!
It came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags.
“Maybe Christmas (he thought) doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more.”
Take heart! The vast majority of Christmas lore and legend centers around poverty. Why? Because our dear Savior was born in a manger. We should shed the modern materialism and corporatism that tries to convince us that Christmas is only Christmas if it has all these perfect parties, perfect decorations, perfect new gifts, perfect clothes, outfits, and hair, and if you don’t have it all you’re horrible, ugly, mean, sad, and you ruined Christmas. This is false guilt, ladies. Filling our homes and hearts and hearths with Christmas music and Christmas stories is a far better way to spend the holiday than shopping, shopping, shopping. Get the Christmas Carol, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, notice Christmas with the Weasleys in Harry Potter, The Gift of the Magi, Little Women, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Christmases, Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories, and more.
Christmas isn’t about the stuff. (Repeat this with me every day! Christmas isn’t about the stuff!) Christmas is about the gift of being home together as a family, whether that is a blood family, a found family, your church, or your community. Christmas is a broad holiday. It shelters war stories, ghost stories, trees, troubles, and magic. It shelters good Christian men rejoicing! Don’t make it about the stuff.
With that heart set right, what are some practical things we can do?
1. Simplify. Let’s take that To-Do list and that gift-giving list and trim it down. We don’t need our gift list to be the latest, greatest, and most expensive hot item, or even that one perfect thing for the person you love. We put far too much pressure, probably because of commercials, on ourselves and often our other family members to create magic through the gifts we give. Ladies, gift-giving is hit-and-miss. It just is. But what if, what if, instead of a gift, we gave a handwritten note? That might be enough. A note of encouragement and love and thanksgiving might be more special than a thing. Often we pressure ourselves because of pride or false guilt into buying more and more things for more and more people. Let’s let it go. Let’s shorten our lists. Let’s focus our limited monetary and energy resources on our first priorities—the people in our homes. Then as our budgets allow, we can spread from there to others. We should do the same with our plans. Let’s not try to do it all. Pick one or two parties. Temperance and prudence should mark our holiday planning, not frantic exhaustion. None of us can be all things to all people. Let’s focus on being the golden merriness to the people in our homes, not events and not stuff.
2. Communicate. This is especially important with our children if we’ve had a big financial or physical setback. Set the expectations and get them on board. We grew up pretty poor. I have happier family memories from our times of poverty than I do from our times of financial security. Yes, the nicer gifts were wonderful, but the love and camaraderie we shared when the Christmas spirit came only from us was far more magical. It set the foundation for us and our family traditions. Communication creates less opportunity for disappointment. You may even need to tell friends or extended family that you’re scaling back. This may also be you communicating with yourself and finally admitting that you hate all the materialism and just want to stop and refocus on the more important parts of the holiday.
3. Baking from Scratch and Crafts. Sometimes financial downturns will produce a state in our homes where our commodity is time, not money. Baking some cookies to drop by your husband’s office, to take to your work, to share with friends, to take to teachers is cheaper than gifting all those people individual store-bought gifts. Making small artistic gifts like bookmarks, cards, ornaments, canned goods and such is another way to use more time and less money. This does take a fair amount of prudence, otherwise, these homemade goodies will blow the monetary/energy budget completely. But heartfelt homemade gifts are coming back in vogue. We’re learning to treasure them again. Just remember, start early. It is never too early to start working on these things or at least gathering the supplies. Think ahead. Frugality requires wisdom. I spent many a childhood Christmas working on cross-stitch or plastic canvas projects with my brothers and sisters, making gifts for family. Those are good memories.
4. Attitude and Atmosphere. “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is by singing loudly for all to hear.” Truer words were never spoken. Even if we must scale way back, we can bless our families and lift our spirits by creating a Christmas-saturated atmosphere. Decorate the house even if it is only with construction paper chains, or popcorn and cranberries on a string. Play Christmas music. You can find it for free all over the internet. Read Christmas stories and watch Christmas movies. Again, popcorn and hot chocolate can go a long way to creating wonderful, rich family memories. The library is a great resource for all of us. Books, movies, and audiobooks are available for free. Make sure you start looking early because everyone is checking those same things out too. Remind yourself and your people that poor Christmases (money or energy) are just as rich as wealthy ones, and sometimes richer. Let’s get our people on board and fill the home with love, delight, and joy.
There is one other way we might be facing a poverty-bound Christmas and that is people. We may have money and energy to spare, but the people aren’t here. This can be because of divorce, death, or the breakdown of family bonds. This can be a loss of friends who have always been there to celebrate with you. I recommend two things. One, use this opportunity to look for other lonely people within your family, church family, or community. This might be widows, this might be an older couple who can’t see their grandkids, this might be a childless couple, this might be a young family or a bachelor. If you are facing a people-poor holiday, find those who are facing the same and unite with them. Two, acknowledge your loneliness and go back up through that list. Start creating some traditions even for yourself, and then as you do this, do extra. Make an extra pie. Cook extra cookies. Make two cross-stitch bookmarks. Then, give the extra away. Fill your empty home with music, movies, books, and wonderful smells and then share it with others. Steep yourself in the eucatastrophe of the season and look for, hunt down, someone to share it with. Don’t forget that community building takes time. This may seem like an empty holiday this season, but if you work on this, it will be fuller next Christmas, and fuller after that, and fuller after that.
Even if we face hard times, we’ve got this! Why? We’re the homemakers! This is who we are. This is what we do. We can make and embrace Christmas joy without all the hoopla and all the demands. Let’s look at our homes and make Christmas homes for our people. Not fake TV commercial families, not even fantasy Hallmark families, but for OUR people. Encourage your children to embrace older stories where an orange in the toe of your stocking was a big deal. Buy them thrifted books and toys, or rope. You’d be surprised by how many things from Home Depot make great gifts for kids. The point is to help our people, young and old, family and friends, be filled to the brim with Christmas spirit, not stuff. This starts with our own hearts. Go play some Christmas music and start singing.
Merry Christmas, HearthKeepers!
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