How To Give More While Spending Less This Christmas

Christmas, without a shadow of a doubt, is the season of giving. The shopping malls become packed with eager shoppers wanting to buy something for the people they hold dear in their hearts.

Online stores experience a boost in sales for the convenient and easily deliverable items they offer. Card companies enjoy the hottest quarter of the year during the chilly months leading to December 25. With all the hooplas surrounding Christmas, it is quite easy to get swayed by the commercial tendencies promoted by the holiday.

But let’s take a deeper look at Christmas. Is Christmas really the season to spend money so that we could buy some presents for our loved ones? Or is spending money merely incidental to the reason behind the season, that is to share our happiness with the people around us?

This is not a philosophical article, by any means. But we have to lay down that premise for the point of this piece. And that point is this: we don’t really have to run our budgets dry to celebrate the holiday season. We could always revel in what Christmas truly means in our own way, and the more creative the alternative we come up with, the more special it would be for the people we wish to be the recipients of our love.

Let’s illustrate. Neil Gaiman, a very famous New York Times bestselling author, didn’t have the time to prepare a shopping list in the Christmas of 1997. So instead, he crafted an amazingly thought-provoking 100-word story about Santa Claus, wrote the same at the back of a Christmas-themed postcard, and sent it out to his friends. The story, “Nicholas Said,” has seen publication many times since then, but the very postcards upon which the story was written would command an immeasurable amount of bids on eBay.

Of course, he’s a New York Times bestselling author, you might say. Anything he does would be special. But the point here is, he could have given an autographed copy of his book, but he did not. Instead, he went the extra mile, and what he did give his friends was viewed as something more special than an item you could buy somewhere.

And for Neil Gaiman, all he had to do was spend for the postcards.

You could do the same, as well. You could choose to create something more economical, rather than buy an expensive gift that has less meaning than something you would pour your heart out into making. Here are some ideas about what you could come up with to celebrate this season of seasons:

* You could prepare some homemade greeting cards that would reflect the personalities of the recipients. All you would need are some art tools and some cardboard papers. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the creative flair for these things. Your effort would shine through whatever you would come up with, and this would be better than anything that money could buy.

* If you have the touch for poetry, personalized poems would make great Christmas gifts! Even if you don’t have such talent, give it a try. You’d be surprised to discover how easy it is to come up with words that rhyme. They could be funny or emotional it depends on what message you want to convey. For example, the intended recipient’s name is Jenny. Here’s a sample limerick you could prepare for her.

And thus, the holidays have arrived quite quickly

But my budget’s down to zero, and I’ve become quite thrifty

So to this special girl, a masterpiece of an art

Who has, time and time again, stolen my heart

The heartiest greeting this Yuletide days to my dearest Jenny

* You could rummage through your stuff and give something that is o value to you to someone who is special. Special things embedded with sentimental value are more worthy of appreciation than things you could always purchase over the counter.

* You could create a scrapbook from photographs of special moments shared with the intended recipient.

Christmas is the season of giving. Giving doesn’t necessarily include buying something. You don’t have to go broke this coming holiday. You could always share a piece of your heart to the people you hold dear through some works that would reflect how special they are in your life. Click here for more info on cool gifts that you can give

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