How To Have Christmas When There is Very Little Money

Image from The Graphics Fairy

I have been there, in years past, when money was very, very tight and there was no way to make things stretch to the big, wonderful Christmas I had planned.  My goals were reasonable - a few gifts per child, a nice festive meal, decorations, sending out Christmas cards...but they were well beyond my budget.  Of course I realize that Christmas is ultimately a Christian celebration, but you still want to make it a 'feast', for the eyes and the palate, in addition to experiencing and celebrating the birth of Christ.

Here is a great article with some ideas on just that.  And I'm going to add a few of my own (and repeat a few already mentioned) ideas to this!

First off, decorate, decorate, decorate.  Buy a bag of popcorn kernels and pop them on the stove and string them on strings, or hang up pine cones, put a few pine boughs in water and hang whatever decorations you have on them.  Make paper chains and paper snowflakes and pompoms!  Whatever you can manage, do it.  If the house looks festive, it will feel like Christmas.

Play Christmas music!  Sing carols at the sink doing the dishes!  Get as much Christmas music into the season as possible to build the mood.

Make Christmas outings and events an important part of the month.  Take an evening to walk or drive around and look at the lights and decorations.  Watch old Christmas movies on the sofa.  Have a 'decorating' day.  Buy an Advent calendar at the dollar store if you can, and open up a cheap chocolate every day of Advent.  If your local church has something special like a Christmas Eve candlelight service, consider going.

Consider your gifts carefully.  The most important people to get gifts are the children in your immediate family - your cousin's kids you see once a year don't HAVE to have a gift.  If you're in a position where you must buy for people outside your immediate family, either let everyone know that you are working in a budget this year or else just send something small and let the chips fall where they may.  Don't be embarrassed to say you have a budget, everyone should have a budget!  Simply say something like "With the children getting older (or whatever reason you would like to use) I think that this year we should keep the budget at X per child.  Would you like to send me some gift ideas for Sally and Jimmy or do you want me to surprise them!?"

Cut the Christmas cards to the bare minimum.  You don't need to send a card to everyone at church, just wish them a Merry Christmas.  You don't have to send Christmas cards to relatives you see all the time.  You don't have to send cards to people who have never sent you cards!  You can just choose to not send the cards!  In fact, if you take an evening to make a 15 minute 'Merry Christmas' phone call to your nearest and dearest, they would likely appreciate that much more anyway.

When you do buy, remember to wrap absolutely everything you possibly can.  Buy a roll of lifesavers and wrap it.  Buy a pair of socks - wrap it.  Wrap everything in the stockings and everything under the tree.  Wrap things in fun ways - newspaper funnies and sheets of old music and pillowcases with lots of ribbon.  Wrap something in string and elicit all the laughs.  Wrap something in box after box so the children have to unwrap layer after layer to get to the chocolate bar inside!  Wrap gifts and then tie strings to them and let the kids 'find' their presents.  Or use a treasure hunt with clues.  The gifts may be small in price and in number, but the wrapping will be utterly unique and memorable.

Think outside the box to find presents.  Wrap stuff you already own for younger children.  Seriously, take a bunch of trains from the train-obsessed 18 month old's stash, clean them up, and wrap them again.  Wrap hand-me-downs from other families that you had put aside, wrap toiletries you would need to buy anyway for a child or even beloved foods and beverages.  If your child loves a certain kind of cereal, for example, buy them a box 'all their own'.  Look through second hand stores for gently loved books, toys and clothing, of course, but also advertise on buy and sell sites.  Often people are getting rid of things before Christmas.  Try saying something like "Does anyone have Lego they are thinking of purging before the holidays?  Looking to spend no more than $5 but open to any and all pieces!"  Sometimes people have things they just don't even realize someone else would want, so they never bother advertising.

The Christmas meal can be made more special with a well-dressed table.  Fancy Christmas napkins from the Dollar store, or a pretty Goodwill tablecloth.  Candles go a long way to making a table beautiful, and dimmed lights.  Invite guests!  Every meal looks more festive if someone else is there.  Simmer a cinnamon stick and a few cloves in a pot on the stove to make the house smell 'Christmassy' while you cook.  No matter what you serve as a meal, offer a special drink and a dessert.  It can be anything - some shortbread cookies with a little piece of maraschino cherry on top, or red and green jello in a glass with a spiral of whipped cream, but dessert makes a regular meal festive and a sparkly drink (ginger ale mixed with cranberry juice is always a good bet) is unusual for supper, so it adds to the feeling of 'special'.

I love what the blog above mentions about Christmas Day - keep the nice holiday feeling going through the day so that it doesn't feel like when the gifts are done, everything is done.  It's a good time to go sledding, or arrange a visit with a neighbour, or go to church in your very best clothes, or serve at the soup kitchen, or walk around handing out dry socks and new toothbrushes to the homeless, or go see a matinee.  Whatever you do, make sure there is something 'next' on Christmas Day after the presents are done.

So there you go!  I know that for many people, Christmas is an entirely secular time of year, so I hope I've included lots of ideas for the non-church people who celebrate.