Less and Less - A Christmas Gift Story

There are a lot of nieces and nephews in my life. Because of this, Christmas becomes a crazy dance of coordination with other aunties and uncles, and with the parents, to conjure up the perfect gifts for them. And by perfect, I mean that there are certain criteria involved in these gift choices: you want to be fair so that every kid has a gift of approximate value. That they will love. That they don't already own. That you haven't given to them or their siblings or cousins before. And that won't drive Mom and Dad crazy.

In our case, it also has to be easy to ship, or available on Amazon (Prime), because everyone still lives a province away.

Seriously, I love my nieces and nephews, but buying gifts for these lovely littles was one of the biggest stresses leading up to Christmas. Hubbs never gets involved in the gifting aspects of the holidays, so it has always been a one-woman show come the festive season. It's never a small expense, both in terms of time and money, either. And while I know it's not readily admitted, everyone who receives a gift from us always feels obliged to send one back. Around mid-November is when I would usually start fielding emails and texts about Little L's clothing and shoe sizes, interests, hobbies and reading level, because clearly, I'm not the only one who gets stressed and wants to get on top of the gift-giving before December rolls around.

But not this year.

Nope.

We had had enough. *I* had had enough.

Several weeks ago, we emailed all of the siblings with our new plan. No more toys. Period. Ideally, no more crazy lavish gifts.

Instead, we requested that we might send each of our beloved nieces and nephews *one* book. Just one. And we double-underscored and highlighted that nobody should feel any obligation whatsoever to send a book back our way, because Little L is a book hoarder and already has a library of books. Too many, really. (And yet, she will still have book gifts waiting for her to open on Christmas morning, from her generous aunties and uncles, because that's just how my family rolls).

So back to Amazon Prime I went, but this time I was gleefully browsing for a book for each youngster. Sure, technically, everyone is still getting a gift, and I'm still being a consumer spending money. But rather than another fad-driven toy, it's a book, which is educational, plus it is something that doesn't clutter up a home quickly, so does it really even count as a gift? Not really.
And it's affordable, and pretty low-stress to send. I am beyond thrilled that we decided to do things this way this Christmas season. I hope the other aunties and uncles feel equally liberated by our no-toy, no-gift policy ;)

And now I have a game plan for next Christmas! I can start adding books to my "save for later" cart for each of the kids during the year, so that come November 2019, I will just need to move the saved titles into my cart and ship them off.

Less stress. Less clutter. Less money spent. Less time wasted.

More meaningful and more intentional.

Better. 💝