Cancel All Gifts! Sorry, But No One Gets Anything This Year
Given that it hasn't yet got properly cold here, it feels like a very strange hallucination. In a naked effort to make us forget that we are living in an economic meltdown, the stores are full of Christmas trees and fairy lights. Their illusion makes you feel you are in some sort of dream world - everyone is friendly, everything is cheap. Never mind what the news says about the collapsing auto industry, all is just fine and cheery.
The major department stores have begun their holiday sales, with 40 per cent discounts, a month early. The high-end designers, too, have been holding secret friends-and-family sample sales, desperate to find any way to lure consumers into parting with some of the dollars currently held tightly in our fists.
I will admit to sneaking into a few of the above - I mean, who can resist an email that says the following:
1) This is for you and a select few only. Do Not Pass On.
2) Dresses reduced from thousands to as little as $100 ..?
I didn't read points three and four - one and two were enough to get me through the relevant door in the garment district at the appointed hour. After all, I reasoned, what's the harm in just looking?
I'd expected to see the lines of women that are the usual nightmare at high-end sample sales but to my surprise I was the only visitor at one major label: not a good sign. Nor was the fact that as I tried on a couple of things, a tailor was right on hand to help me in case I wanted something to fit better.
When does one ever get service like this, I mulled as I looked from the tailor to my reflection in the mirror?
The answer was right there in the glass: when one is a gullible idiot who believes a dress that doesn't quite fit and you wouldn't ordinarily choose is worth buying if it's one-fifth of the price you'd have paid for it six months ago in a shop.
I took it off, said a polite goodbye to the fitter and retreated to the inner sanctum of harsh reality: home.
That night I watched yet more commercials for holiday gifts and made a mental note. Other than the kids who can have a couple of presents each, no one else gets anything this year. Sorry. Those fairy lights will not make a fool out of me.
This article was originally published by the London Evening Standard
Follow Vicky Ward on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VickyPJWard
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Invest In Amrica
This Year Give Them A US Savings Bond!
It May Not Sparkle like a Diamond,
But It May Give Our New Government More Capital
To Reinvest in Mortgages, Infrastructure, and Jobs
- without having to borrow it from China and others and add to the deficit.
During WWII the successful War Bond effort with mass public support and industrial cooperation turned the US into the "Arsenal of Democracy" that built the tanks that won the war.
Is today's economic "crisis" any less compeling?
Invest In America
gmail.commericaplan@gmail.com
This year for Christmas I gave my family and friends as well as people I do not know the best gift I could think of--- I contributed to the campaigns of Democratic party members so we could break the Republican stranglehold on our futures.
I've already told my family....
These women...ma
No tree...I will "string"..
Saddled with crushing medical bills, I had a sense Christmas would be our family's own personal test in redefining the meaning of this holiday. I have alerted my daughter that she will receive one gift, and that the other gift will be our support (giving some time) to our local animal shelter to care for animals who were ousted when their owners were foreclosed.
Now, when I look at the sumptuous displays of holiday gifts at the local mall, I look at them with a certain bemused distance - the same way I glance for a fun, fleeting instant at pictures of castles on the covers of British Literature textbooks. It is fun, cheap fantasy, but not connected to anything realistic for me.
Since my family is really hurting financially (of course we're not alone, I know), I am always trying to stretch a dollar to prepare simple holiday meals. Yesterday, I received an e-mail saying I had "won" a $500 gift card to spend at Trader Joe's. The tiny-lettered disclaimer at the bottom disclosed that the vendor (not Trader Joe's) was trying to lure me into purchasing a membership in some "club". Predators are out there to prey on those who yearn for a yuletide season of rich feasts, unfortunately.
Last year was the last year I sent Christmas cards out with a note that in the future the money spent on cards and postage would be donated to a local charity. I also requested that my children not buy a gift but donate to our local Meals on Wheels.
This year our gifts to our children will be a donation to our local food bank.
We do have grandchildren and thier gift has always been money put away for college.
We all have so much "stuff" and there are many people out there that need food, our local food banks are hurting as they now have more clients to feed.
So, if you can buy a little extra at the supermarket and donate it to a local food bank.
I made the announcement last year.
No gifts from me or for me.
My family had dinner out on Christmas day and it was the greatest sanity saver ever. This wretched and blind consumerism is a sickness and it's just as well that the bitter economic climate is teaching us the value of the incredible shrinking dollar.
There's more to life than buying stuff.
To be honest with you, we are not even pruchasing a Christmas tree and my husband and I are not giving gifts. Things have been bad and under the last 8 years of BUSH & GOP economics, every male in my family has lost his "professional" career....
I am an adult and I can handle this and I am glad that there are no young children in our family. WE can thank every person who put BUSH in OFFICE for this financial mess....no
My sister , the Registered Nurse, and myself have kept this family going.....
The culture of a spending society, a consumer society, a society of buying useless stuff, and stuff in order to keep up with the neighbors or classmates will and must come to an end unless you are Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. The standard of living for most Americans will soon come crashing down all around them. There is no getting around it. It is time to look at one's life and the lives of those around us and appreciate them without having to lavish them with gifts. Homemade bread or pies, jellies, or assembling a tin of assorted nuts and seeds to snack on. A grocery gift card, or one that helps finish the shelving in the kid's room or the game room. Simple consumer gifts with thought should be our maximum spending. Replacing the old and warn-out items used regularly should be our priority. Retailers will soon be disappearing from our landscape. We can thank our greedy countrypersons for this situation; and our free-marketeers and those laizzez faire, outsourcing capitalists often brought to us through Republicanism.
Write checks to some of these blog sites and web sites that give us real news. Give to those who are really in need. Shovel a neighbor's sidewalk this winter, or check in on them. There are many ways to show kindness and giving.
http://eye
Yes, the bush administration IS the Sheriff of Nottingham. Christmas is canceled.
Good idea, meltdown or not:
http://www
amen!
I too have already sent the warning out to family and friends. I'm broke, and I'm not kidding.
The nieces and nephews will get some kind of token gift, but the parents and siblings will have to do with the pleasure of my company over a nice dinner.
( and I'm an absolute riot when I'm broke and depressed )
My present this year is OBAMA.....
"My present this year is OBAMA" - well said!
No Gifts is the way to go for many of us and it has nothing to do with the economic downturn.
I have 1 mother, 1 father-in-law, 2 sisters-in-law, 4 children, 5 brothers-in-law, 6 sisters, 9 nieces, 11 nephews and 12 drummers drumming.
I used to buy gifts for all of these people. Then a few years ago, I decided it was really stupid to be showering gifts on people who could buy anything they needed themselves. I still buy for my mother, father-in-law, and the children but everyone else gets a homemade card telling what charitable contributions I made in their honor.
Charities of choice (due to my son's deployment in Afghanistan) are:
Women for Women International
http://www
where I sponsor an Afghan widow. This year I am adding a Congolese woman as well.
and
Beyond the 11th
http://www
Another charity that helps Afghan women.
The first year I did this I was a little nervous about the reception I would get
That year one sister gave shares in a Heifer International "knitting basket"
http://www
One sponsored a Save-the-Children child
http://www
One donated to a local family struggling with ALS
And one made a donation to rebuild Katrina ravaged schools
Many charities can set up monthly donations, so its a little easier on your wallet.
You can save time, save trouble and save the world.
I think you'll see just as many shoppers out, buying just as many gifts. They'll just be buying cheaper gifts, a lot cheaper.
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