Gifts, decoration, events, food–there just seems to be so much much at Christmas time. Like so many parents, this is the hardest time of year for me to show restraint, to say no to my kid. To buy less, do less, eat less. But, what’s Christmas like when you plan to move into a bus in 6 months? Well, we’re definitely not doing less. But we are trying to have and buy less.
I have always been a gift-giver. It’s what they call my “love language,” or, one of the main ways I show my love. For most of my adult life, I’ve had a “gift closet” where I accumulated gifts for people throughout the whole year. Whenever I saw something that someone I loved would like, I’d buy it and put it away for the next gift-giving time. This usually resulted in lots of gifts for my friends and family members. I was a maximalist in gift-giving, just like I was in most other areas of my life.
When I had a child, my gift-giving really went into high gear. All the things I thought she should have (wooden blocks, plastic dinosaurs, dolls, duplos, a play kitchen) combined with all the things I never got to have and all the things she actually asked for to make for, well, too many gifts under the tree. I’d hear about how giving books at Christmas was a good tradition. So, I’d add a few books under the tree. I’d see an adorable ornament featuring some character she liked, so ornament-giving also became a yearly tradition. Just to be fair, I also had most of these same traditions with my husband, giving him a few books and a Darth Vader ornament in addition to whatever else I’d gotten him. (I’d then be hurt when I only had a couple gifts from him…but that’s a story for another time.) All the while, I was wondering how I could ever teach my child to be happy with what she had. And, I’d try to portray our Christmas’s as modest, low key affairs. Yeah, there was some difficult rationalization and justification going on in my head.
As I’ve become less focused on (and more fed up with) stuff, some of my gift-giving has waned, or become more manageable. It’s always a shock when I get to a week before Christmas and realize, “Oh. I never got a gift for so-and-so.” (Just as a side note, I’ve also experienced less expectation of gifts myself as my own gift giving has “downsized.”)
This year, as we anticipate having almost no room very soon, it’s hard to know what to give to my immediate family–useful things like travel clothes, small things like nice ballpoint pens, and things you use up like candy and fancy lotion.
Another idea that’s all over these days is the “experiences instead of stuff” gift. I like this a lot. I like it less just because it’s so trendy right now. But, that being said, this year we planned a family gift/trip on Dec 23rd as a big part of our Christmas presents. We stayed a night at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville (in one of the balcony rooms that look out on the conservatory that we’d always wanted to stay in!) and took ourselves the next afternoon, today actually, to see the Nutcracker at the Ryman Theater. It was a blast. Truly.
Would my daughter have been understanding if our great family time in Nashville meant no gifts under the tree? Probably not. It’s a process. And we’ll probably always have a few gifts there under the tree. They might be small things, though. Of course, some pretty great things come in very small packages!
