It started with stockings. My mother told me and my siblings, sometime in my twenties, that Father Christmas would no longer be filling my dad’s old football09 socks with individually wrapped presents (plus a tangerine and a fun-sized Mars Bar) and depositing them at the foot of our beds while we slumbered on Christmas Eve.
At the time, I was not best pleased. “You just can’t get the staff these days,” I ‘joked’ with mum, but secretly I really was sad about the end of this time-honoured childhood tradition.
Not long after that, mother said that we wouldn’t be getting ‘big presents’ at Christmas either, since my brother, sister and I were all gainfully employed and shouldn’t be relying on the Bank of Mum and Dad to finance our festive desires.
Fast forward a few years and I was, in fact, the one spearheading the ‘no presents’ approach in our family. At this point we’d scaled down to a Secret Santa system where we each bought one gift, an item specified by the recipient, meaning there was no element of surprise on Christmas morning. It was basically like doing an Amazon order.
Now, we’ve gone three years without giving each other presents and I don’t miss it at all. It’s not like any of us really need anything we can’t buy ourselves (my siblings and I are all in our thirties now). And being a relatively environmentally conscious family, we just don’t see the point in buying stuff for the sake of it.
I certainly don’t miss the shopping – I avoid high street shops like the plague most of the year as it is. Come November, you couldn’t pay me to venture into that overheated, tinsel-covered, Mariah Carey-soundtracked hellscape. Then there’s the wrapping, having to lug the presents home on a packed train – and not to mention the cost.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against other people buying festive gifts – I’m not that much of a Scrooge. “God bless them, every one,” I say (to butcher the Tiny Tim quote), it’s just that as a family we’ve discovered Christmas Day is equally enjoyable when we don’t swap presents.
And we’re not the only ones. Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert fame (revered as nothing short of a saint in my frugal family) has been telling people to say no to unnecessary Christmas presents for years. He reckons there’s too much pressure to buy ‘tat’, which people don’t want and will never use – especially unfair for those who already have financial difficulties.
Personally, I feel like I can get even more into the Christmas spirit when I don’t have present-buying on my December to-do list, and I’m looking forward to all the other aspects of Crimbo Day.
Will you be signing a Pre-NUPP*?https://t.co/5ewAtzhxSK #MartinLewis
*Pre-Christmas 'No Unnecessary Presents' Pact— Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) November 26, 2019
We still have a tree and eat a huge turkey dinner with all the trimmings, followed by Christmas pud and lashings of brandy sauce. We clink our glasses of fizz, pull crackers, pop on our paper crowns, groan at the terrible jokes, play board games and watch the Queen’s Speech.
Someone might – full disclosure – occasionally buy a ‘family’ present for everyone, usually one of the aforementioned board games. Then we’ll end up having a good old row about the rules when we play it for the first time. And let’s be honest, isn’t that the most traditional Christmas activity of all?
