I love Christmas. I love the twinkly lights, Gavin and Stacey specials and boxes of Quality Street. I love winter pubs, the “Fairytale of New York” and Christmas movies. Is there anything more comforting than the story of a city slicker going home to her small town only to be wooed by a forester in a chunky knit? I don’t think so. Except maybe sniffing nutmeg scented candles in TK Maxx.
But there is one part of Christmas that I don’t do; a part that’s the most important bit for many. No, not celebrating the birth of baby Jesus – presents.
It’s been about 25 years since we did Christmas presents in our house.
I was about sixteen when mum instigated the ban. Dad was sick, money was tight and there would be no gifts, she announced. I didn’t think she meant it. No presents… well, that was tantamount to child abuse. Instead I took it as a new version of the annual speech about how spoiled we were and how in her day you were happy with an orange.
But that year there was nothing under the tree and that was that.
What started as financial necessity when we were kids developed into a full-blown militant stance against Christmas consumerism. Friends who came over were banned from bringing presents and 25 years later, we have kept the no present rule.
We’ll show up with bottles of wine and bags of food, but generally speaking that’s it. Some years when I’m feeling flush, I’ll wrap up some lip balms or get my sisters a pair of earrings but mostly I don’t bother. And I could not recommend it more.
I don’t even buy presents for the children in my life, which feels controversial. After all, Christmas is for kids, isn’t it? But when I see the amount that my friends’ kids get bought I’m horrified. Are we teaching them that material possessions mean happiness? How young are they when they start to believe that what matters most about them is what pair of trainers they have? And how bad do they feel when they go back to school without the same computer games more affluent kids got? I would rather take them out for hot chocolates or a movie than buy them more stuff.
Even cheap Secret Santa gifts annoy me – I don’t want to spend hours searching through tat that costs less than £5 which will go straight into a drawer or the bin. We all know by now how much plastic ends up in landfills or shores of beaches. What’s the point?
Far from being a miserable affair, a gift free Christmas is a liberation. We don’t spend December running around shops buying pointless crap for an army of people.
It does confuse people though.
‘Have you done your shopping yet?’ hairdressers ask and I say ‘no, we don’t do presents’. ‘None at all?’ They’ll ask. ‘None at all!’ I smile while they massage my scalp like they are tending to an alien. But I’m not an alien – often I look at people who are buying presents for aunties, teachers, dog walkers, neighbours, cousins and think they are the ones who have been taken over by some strange force.
I genuinely don’t know how people afford to buy the number of presents they do. I suspect many of them can’t, which is why January is spent in a cold sweat opening credit card bills. But with the cost of living the way it is – might more of us go the way of a present-free Christmas?
Martin Lewis himself has urged Britons to forgo ‘unnecessary Christmas presents’ and claimed the best gift is “not buying anyone anything”.
It’s 11 years since the money saving expert did his first blog post and broadcast urging people to stop buying unnecessary gifts. He expected a snowstorm of protest but what he got was an avalanche of feedback from people saying they do it and it was a huge relief. His plea has been watched over 17 millions times and the posts shared by 300,000 people on Facebook.
‘Many people feel obliged to buy gifts for others that they know they won’t use with money they don’t have, and cause themselves stress they don’t need,’ he wrote.
‘Let’s work together to ban unnecessary Christmas presents, not for your spouse, not for smiling children under the tree, but the ever expanding list of friends and cousins and teachers that we feel forced to buy.’
Lewis spoke about the origin of giving gifts. Gifts used to be a kind of social banking. If a young couple were getting married, older couples would give gifts to get them going, on the understanding that when the couple was wealthier they would pass on gifts to another young couple.
Now, as he puts it, Christmas is a ‘zero sum game’. I give you a scarf for £20 and you feel the need to get me something of similar value back. That might sound fair enough but what if twenty pounds is nothing to you but a lot for me? Your act of generosity could unwittingly be putting me under pressure to reciprocate and buy something I can’t afford, spending money that would otherwise be going on food for my kids or towering heating bills.
Put this way, giving someone a gift can actually be harmful.
I can imagine gifts lovers rolling their eyes at this. It’s a bit over the top isn’t it? What about the joy of giving? Isn’t this all a bit bah-humbug? I don’t think so. How many times have you been given a present that goes straight to the charity shop? Or how many panicked hours have you wasted in shops buying something just for the sake of it, knowing that you can’t really afford it? How is that joyful?
The idea that the only way we can only show people we care by spending money is a capitalist construct. A billion dollar advertising industry tells us love is a diamond or a trip to John Lewis. But is it really? I don’t need to spend £30 on a scented candle to tell my best friend I care about her. If I see something in the year that I know she’ll love, I’ll buy it for her but I won’t go out looking for something on the 23rd December because I ‘have to’.
I sometimes make presents – this year I’m stuffing cloves in oranges to give to friends as decorations – but mostly I buy people drinks. Often this ends up more expensive than the scented candle, but at least we’ve celebrated what’s important about Christmas; spending time with the people you love under fairy lights and spending the next day on the sofa watching hunks in chunky jumpers while eating Quality Streets. It’s what baby Jesus would want.
Try it. You might find that agreeing to skip presents can be the best gift at all.
