A new holiday gifting tradition
By Karina | November 14, 2011
I got a really wonderful email from my dad and stepmom last week – it was a mass email, and it went like this:
We have been thinking – you have been very generous in the past and we have appreciated your gifts. We would like to request that you NOT give us any special holiday gifts. We feel that we should focus on our grandchildren and those in need. We are considering the attached as a guide in our selections.
We are suggesting that we all abide by this. This will only work if we all commit to this plan. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to talk with either of us.
As a result, we will not be giving individual gifts.
As always, simple cards and personal notes are appreciated and welcomed.
They attached a slightly edited version of this mass email as their guide.
I was so excited to see this email! Mostly because it makes me feel a little more secure in my homemade Christmas dreams - I don’t do a 100% homemade gifting every year, but I do try to give everyone SOMETHING homemade. I know that my nieces and nephews and stepsons much prefer getting some “boughten” toys, but I do make hats and other things for them by hand, so they have something lasting and handmade, and something else faddish and sure to please. (though to be honest, I give them lots of books and art supplies, usually – it’s hard to keep up with the toys du jour!)
I love the idea of keeping the cash in the community, too – there are various numbers out there, but some studies say that as much as 87% of money spent in big box stores leave the community. So if you walk into a big box store and spend $100 bucks, only $13 stays locally, usually in the form of low retail wages. The rest leaves town and goes to other places in the form of stockholder and corporate dividends, among others. On the other hand, if you shop at a local independent retailer around 45% of the money stays local!
In our family we are already really low key – my sibs and stepsibs do a gift swap, and we all give to the kids, and we also all give to our parents. We hash this out every year at Thanksgiving, and I’m glad that we make these decisions as a group! As caring and accepting as my family is, it can be hard to be the only one handing out handmade gifts, so I’m thankful that this year we will probably have a more DIY kind of party than previously.
So remember - it’s never too early to plan your holiday gifting if you’re going to go a DIY or handmade route. Reach out now, and get everyone on board!
[[Photo from flickr user Axel Buhrmann via creative commons license.]]
Topics: Activism, Crafts/DIY, Waste | Comments Off
Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
No comments yet.