Let me boast for a moment...I am finished Christmas shopping.This was a premeditated move that I have been thinking about for months. I was going to do 80% of my shopping online. I exceeded my goal and purchased 95% online with only gift cards and one item bought in a store.
And my former Borders co-workers will not like what I am about to say, but...I was astounded by the discrepancy in price between Borders and Amazon. It makes sense. Borders only sells books and music. Amazon sells EVERYTHING. They can cut prices. So, no matter my loyalty to Borders, I had to go with Amazon because the prices were almost half on everything that I purchased.
Another goal for Christmas this year was to make Christmas smaller, in the material sense. I have spoken to more than three people who have also made this their goal. They are not buying presents for everyone that they usually do. I have heard people talking about smaller gifts. For example, instead of an impractical gift like another Christmas decoration, a person was going to give a bag of coffee beans. Lovely. In my extended family, we have decided not to exchange names. Lovely.
I do not want to make Christmas smaller because I am a Grinch. The opposite in fact. I want to enjoy all the parts of Christmas other than the gifts. The baking. The songs. The lights. The TV specials...especially Charlie Brown. The cards. The photos.
Along with my change of attitude towards Christmas, I am not sending a Christmas letter. I struggle with this every year. Nothing changes in our lives and I do not want to share the mundane details that occur in everyone's lives. So, instead, I am writing my cards and adding a favorite recipe from 2007. I think I will make that a tradition. Lovely.
Are you shrinking Christmas?
2 comments:
Sara, I'm a terrible grinch about Christmas, but one part that I do VERY much enjoy is getting and sending Christmas cards, so I am trilled that you are SENDING me something (right?!?) And I'm excited about getting a recipe, and I will admit, a little bit sad about not getting a letter, because I read your blog and know that your life IS interesting, and I know you are such a fantastic writer that you can snip out the details that would make it sound interesting, maybe even more interesting that it is for us readers on your Christmas list (of which I hope I am). But I do really understand that it is hard to write a Christmas letter when you have a blog! I just want to tell everyone to come and read my blog . . . they'd find out so many more interesting things about our family than if they just read my Christmas letter. But then I thought about all the people on my Christmas card list that don't use computers, and wouldn't find out anything about us, so I wrote a Christmas letter anyway, which I hope isn't boring. I tried not to make it boring. You'll get a copy soon, and you can let me know if it was boring. (By the way, I wouldn't trade reading your blog for reading a Christmas letter. No way.)
Trying to shrink- yet it seems to be growing, instead! Good for you!
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