The Sprit of Christmas Past – Christmas Presents

I love getting presents at Christmas, I love giving presents at Christmas. Giving presents has been the zenith of the festive period for me. Even outside of all the partying, the decorations, time off work and the Christmas cheer – the surprise and delight on the faces of my friends and family on Christmas Day is what its been all about. I want to show my nearest and dearest that I love them and they want to show me that too. And its not just the presents – I want to see everybody, have a drink or a meal with them. Have fun, share festive cheer! Have a very merry Christmas!!

The trouble is, it’s just so stressful. I never know what to buy, I worry that I won’t have enough money, I don’t think that my gifts will be up to scratch, so I feel I need to spend more money. I feel bad if I don’t see everybody I know and share with them some kind of celebration that ‘its Christmas’.

It shouldn’t be hard, buying a present in a shop is easy. Just walk up to the shelves, take what you want to the till and hand over your paycheck. And do it again, and again and again, for every person that you want to make happy on Christmas morning. Happy, smiling faces and a happy, smiling bank manager. This year in the UK we’ll spend an estimated £53 billion over the Christmas period – sure that’s including all the food, drink, travel etc, but that’s a lot of money on presents. If that translated into happiness it would be truly AMAZING.

Yet it doesn’t. For one, I don’t really enjoy shopping for presents. Fighting the rest of the hordes for space in the aisles, being slowly roasted by the halogen bulbs put there to make everything bright and shiny makes me feel ill, and the only reason I do it is in hope that what I spend my money on will make the receivers happy. I truly believed that by buying people things, they would become happier. I’m not ruling it out, I think that many of my gifts have been genuinely loved and used but I look at the number of surprise gifts I’ve bought for Rach (and others), that have been used only once, if at all. The same is true in reverse. I’m asked for list of things that I’d like and I struggle to write them. I’m very lucky, I have everything I need and most things I want. So I write list of things I might like, that fit into a budget that I think might be appropriate! Aaargh!!!

The spirit of giving has always been there but now the boundless giving of material presents seems wrong. It feels a bit hollow, lazy and thoughtless and the happiness the gifts bring rarely seem to last into the New Year. So what am I supposed to do instead?