Are you cutting back this Christmas?

I’d love to be cutting back, but everyone else in the family wants to give presents.:( So I have to come up with a list of things I want. They’ve never understood that if I want something I’d already have bought it for myself, so I’m left with stuff I don’t really want, just to keep them happy. Sigh

The few Christmas decorations are returned to the loft every year. We’ve always saved the best of the Christmas wrapping paper. Father Christmas has always reused wrapping paper so he’d rather that people didn’t write on it and cause confusion. He prefers string and a colourful tag which are easily made from small pieces of wrapping – he especially likes those ones where little Santas have been cut out of the paper covered in Santas.

This year we are using coloured jute string (green and red) and this looks good with newspaper (especially wrapped on the cross) so we’ll have to visit a newspaper reading neighbour to find some of that. Christmas cards are going up pegged onto green jute string. So often wrapping paper is torn off just minutes after being put on which is a terrible waste – and the plastic stuff isn’t recyclable. We are making a big effort TO WRITE & SEND Christmas cards to people that we don’t see and don’t speak to regularly as it is important to stay in touch as the numbers of your friends decrease. Chatting to friends is a great way to put your own problems into perspective and you’ll often find that they are or they know someone who is facing the same challenges as you.

We’ll attempt an amount of round robin again with personal addition for each recipient. Two fingers to those stuffy journalists pontificating and moaning about them. I bet they get someone else to write their Christmas cards. Perhaps they feel threatened by the number of other amusing writers there are nowadays. You don’t need to have a job working for an established paper or be rich to write any longer. There are lots of people that we get cards from who we would like to know more about than the fact that they are still alive. Experience tells us that we are unlikely to be alone in that. If you don’t like it – fine. You can use it for whatever you like. For a start you can: Shred it and line your food waste box; compost it in your composter or wormery; use it to light a warming fire in the grate; make a paper plane out of it; put it in your recycling box. It is your lack of imagination and problem if you just send it to landfill and increase yours and your fellow residents’ Council’s Landfill Tax bill and reduce the amount that your Council can spend on their needy residents.

We’re making a bit of space in the freezer so that there will be a little space for food leftovers so we don’t have to eat turkey more days that we want to. We’ve still got last year’s Christmas pud – we eat clementines which we have to find a cold safe place for and we try so hard not to give chocolates but there are always too many stacked high everywhere in the shops that someone will have given way and bought some which will be enough for everyone.

We are going to try and share making Christmas more. Try and make sharing the time that we have together better, We’ll go for walks when we need breaks from each other and each other’s children. If we have time we’ll set up a walk with a quiz. There are some apps for these now. We might be teaching a Granny to text. Then if she goes into hospital she will be able to ask us to being things she wants in. This a very worthwhile activity and the kids will be good at this.

I’m thinking of giving a parent’s young carer a voucher for a Panto so that she can share an activity with her family – if she can. Carers won’t have much time off as families are more spread out than they used to be and travel and time make it harder to gather the family together. So many people don’t get enough time off and find it difficult and very expensive to travel to see friends and family at Christmas.