Simplify Your Christmas

When my children were younger, I always went overboard at Christmas. Buying loads of toys, clothes, and stocking stuffers, spending way too much money.

The years passed, and now my children are young adults living on their own. I continued to be their Santa Claus each Christmas, only now the gifts were larger and more expensive. And now, I was finding many of the gifts were gifts that they truly did not need or already had.

We made the decision to simplify our life, we left our jobs, we bought a smaller home, we moved to the country. But Christmas, well, simplify Christmas that was not part of the bargain, or, was it?

What was happening now was I was racking my brain as to what to buy them. And, likewise, they were racking their brains as to what to get us - we had downsized, we had everything we needed.

It was my daughter in law who simplified Christmas for us.

She suggested that rather than buying gifts for everyone that we do a Christmas exchange. That meant each person would buy one gift with a value of no more than $30.00. Oh, my life just got simpler! Imagine only having to choose one gift, rather than choosing 11 gifts. And it was easy to pick the gift, I always buy something that I would like to have if I had $30.00 to spend as I wish.

On Christmas day, the family gathers and we all bring our one gift. The gifts are always beautifully wrapped so no one knows what the other bought. We place all the gifts on the table. Then each person picks a number. In our case we had 11 people.

The person who got number 1, gets to pick the first gift. Then, number 2 picks a gift, or they could take number 1's gift. As the numbers go up, each person can take one of the gifts that are opened, or they can pick an unopened gift. If someone takes your opened gift, then you have to pick another unopened gift. So, as you can see being number 11 is the best because you get to see all the gifts opened and you can choose whatever you want.

We have had a simple Christmas for the last two years and I must admit, I have enjoyed it immensely. I have found many benefits to our simple gift exchange:

- lots of laughter as people take others' gifts;

- always some great original ideas for these gifts;

- less stress not having to worry about what to buy others;

- less expensive, buying one gift for 30 dollars is much cheaper than buying 11 gifts;

- everyone pays attention to each gift being opened; and,

- remember I buy what I like. I have realized that others have better taste than me as I always pick a different gift than what I bought.

I must admit that the first Christmas we did the Christmas exchange, I was a bit apprehensive. However, now two years later, I would never go back to our previous Christmas way of life. Our simple gift exchange is much better; and a lot more fun!