Six in 10 Canadians saying they will spend less on gifts because of inflation, according to a survey by Equifax Canada.CHRIS HELGREN/Reuters
Christmas is always a crash crunch, but this year you may be feeling the pinch more than ever. Soaring costs have torn a chunk out of household budgets, leaving less behind for all those gifts. But perhaps 2022 is the year that has you consider whether a simpler Christmas can provide less waste and more joy than one built on an avalanche of gifts.
Everyone understands the appeal of that Christmas morning wow factor. A consumer culture of spending, supercharged by social media, is on overdrive in December to convince us that an abundance of presents is the key to a happy holiday season.
If you’ve shopped for gifts, you know how much stress executing this production puts on your time and your finances each year. And this year has been particularly tough, with six in 10 Canadians saying they will spend less on gifts because of inflation, according to a survey by Equifax Canada.
My approach is to stick to a simpler – but equally magical – gift experience, by keeping things in check. Here’s how I do that.
I start by setting a budget for my daughter’s Christmas presents. This budget will depend of course on your own household financial situation, and in my case, I didn’t want to put any of it on a credit card. I targeted $350, which I thought was on the high side until I tried to stick to it. If you think inflation at the supermarket is bad, check out the toy store. In the end, I went slightly over that amount but still managed to come in under $400 for all my daughter’s presents. (And yes, I have already done all of my Christmas shopping.)
To make her Christmas shopping list, I gave my five-year-old a toy catalogue and she circled the items she wanted. I then had her go back and mark the ones she really wanted with a star. That gave me a list of about a dozen things to choose from.
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Some of the gifts on her list I passed on to grandma, since grandparents are an excellent Christmas budget hack.
To choose exactly which gifts would appear under our tree, I followed this simple rhyme a friend shared with me a few years ago: Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read.
I love this as a guide to make sure my child gets a mix of practical and fun presents, without going overboard. But if you feel that four gifts is too few, you can double it and do two smaller items in each category.
I like to fill out the tree with things I was going to buy anyway: clothes in the next size for her to grow into, board games for us to play when it’s too cold to go outside, and her leotard and ballet shoes for the dance classes I registered her in for the New Year.
I follow the same rhyme for my own gifts, and it keeps me from overspending. Like my daughter, I end up with a mix of things I want and things I need. Although I can purchase anything I want at any time, wrapping gifts for myself and sharing the Christmas morning experience with my child is about much more than that.
For some people, the problem with excessive gift buying is the materialism it brings to the holidays. But I care more about the physical consequences of a mountain of toys than I do about the philosophical ones.
Not only do toys clutter our home, their ultimate destination is a landfill. I donate everything my daughter outgrows to second-hand stores, but that doesn’t change the fact that some day, every Barbie doll and stuffed animal will eventually make its way to a garbage heap.
The environmental footprint of our toy consumption is one of the easiest to minimize, especially when Christmas is one of the biggest culprits. That seems as good of a reason as any to keep presents to a minimum, and one of the reasons I tried to prioritize gifts that are experiences, like the ballet classes. It’s also why we have plenty of holiday traditions like baking, making crafts, and visiting family.
I know my daughter will forget what plastic trinkets she received in her stocking, but will look back fondly on the hours we spent baking holiday cookies, tobogganing at a hill, or skating at the community rink. Holiday memories are what we are really trying to gift our children, and thankfully those don’t have to cost a thing.
Bridget Casey, MBA (Finance) is founder of Money After Graduation, a financial e-learning company. You can follow her on Instagram at @bridgiecasey and Twitter at @BridgieCasey.
Bridget Casey