Slow Christmas

Are you trying to take the fun out of Christmas?

Absolutely not.  I’m trying to put it back in!  The average family spends $1,400 on Christmas each year. The average American family also owes an average of $18,000, not counting mortgages.  Where’s the fun in that?

When I ask the biggest Christmas lovers I know what they like most about Christmas, they mention childhood memories, recipes, their favorite Christmas music or movie, or just the general merriment of the season.  The Christmas Spirit.  When you think about it, what we like about giving and receiving gifts is the thought put into it, and the feeling of being loved.

We can be thoughtful and show our love without spending a lot of time and money at the mall.  If you want this Christmas to be special, start a new family tradition, or revive one from your childhood.  Learn how to make something your grandmother used to serve around the holidays.  Read a different Christmas story to your kids for each of the 12 days of Christmas.  The fun of Christmas isn’t really what’s inside the wrapping, the fun is the surprise itself.

You keep talking about the Slow Movement.  What is that?

I got the idea for Slow Christmas initially from an interest in slow food, which just means knowing the people who grow my food, making meals from scratch, and taking the time to enjoy them.  I love Christmas.  So it only made sense to apply the slow food principle to thinking about how we celebrate Christmas.

But when I started looking around, it turns out there’s this whole movement about people learning to lead slower lives.  I watched Carl Honoré’s TED talk, and I was hooked.  Because it’s such a great but also stressful time of year, it makes sense that we begin this exercise of living a slower life with the Christmas season.  It’s the adventure I’m hoping to chronicle here, with your help.

Isn’t buying less bad for the economy?

In a word, no.  The current economic crisis is at least in part the result of over-spending and under-saving.  As we learned with the recession, it’s not a sustainable model, and it’s hurting our communities.  If you really want to support the economy, give donations to your favorite non-profit.  Charitable donations are way down, and your gift can keep non-profits from laying off the people who make your communities a better place.  If it’s manufacturing jobs you care about, you can give green gifts to support the small businesses that are the main generator of new job creation.  You can invest in alternative energy research, or buy carbon offsets, which are investments in the future of the American economy.  Start a savings account for your granddaughter, and show her how it works.  However you look at it, consuming less useless junk is good for the economy.  And besides, I think most of us would agree that any economy based on Christmas Tree USB Warmer Seat Cushions could probably use some re-tooling.

It’s not fair to my kids to deprive them of the toys their classmates will be getting, and if we don’t spoil them, their grandparents will just do it instead and make us look bad.

Parents face a ton of pressure around Christmas.  (It was enough to turn my mom into a Scrooge ever after.)  If all the other kids at school will get the latest Guitar Hero and Zhu Zhu Pet hamster, we don’t want our kid to feel left out.  We also feel guilty for not making as much time as we’d like to spend with our families, and we want to show them our love the best we know how.  But doesn’t just reading about this year’s Tickle Me Elmo make you feel tired?

If you’ve seen your kids opening Christmas presents these days, there’s usually a flurry of wrapping paper, a pile of toys, books, and clothes, and then it’s all over.  Half the presents never get a second glance.  Kids need limits.  It may be that a well-chosen 1 or 2 presents per kid gets you just as far as ten presents bought to fill the space under the tree.  This year, you can focus on doing holiday activities together instead of buying all that junk.

In the first year of cutting back, you can also distract them with a surprise Christmas morning treat, like their favorite food or a Christmas movie, or putting coats over their pajamas and paying a visit to the neighborhood with the best Christmas decorations.  I guarantee you that while they may gripe now, their Christmas memories will center around that activity, not what was under the tree.  And just like there’s pressure to keep up with their classmates’ Christmas presents, my guess is if any of the other parents hear that you’ve opted out, they’ll be thrilled and relieved that they can do it too.  Sanity is contagious.

What if I don’t like to cook or make things?

You don’t have to.  Slow Christmas is not about forced craftiness.  And let’s be honest, your expert knitting skills may be ill-suited to producing something that Cousin Doug is going to like and use.  That’s okay.  The key here is if you must exchange presents, do it thoughtfully, paying attention to what Doug actually wants, not what you want Doug to want.  The good news is that people love checks.  If you give Doug a check, there’s a 100% likelihood that the money will be spent on something he wants.  If you can’t bring yourself to give a check, he’d probably rather have a movie date, or dinner at his favorite restaurant, than reindeer pajamas.  Maybe he’s starting to get into microbrewing — a strategically timed conversation or e-mail exchange about where he gets his supplies, and presto, you’ve got a gift certificate.  Maybe, and this is the most likely scenario, Cousin Doug really doesn’t want anything, and he would be relieved not to have to find you a present too.  In that case, the best present you can give him is letting eachother off the hook.

Isn’t giving donations instead of gifts kind of preachy?

It doesn’t have to be.  Giving to a non-profit in someone’s name should be just as personalized as giving a physical present.  If you have an animal lover on your list, a donation to the local humane society or no-kill shelter makes sense.  If you have a niece who just came back from the Peace Corps or study abroad, a gift to an international relief and development organization like Oxfam may resonate.  If you’re shopping for someone who recently had a loved one pass away from cancer, donate to cancer research.  Heck, if you have a family member who’s irrationally attached to the penny, make a donation in their name to Americans for Common Cents (I am not making this up.)

Christmas giving is a chance to show your loved one that you “get” them, so it feels as if they’d made the donation themselves.  Have a little fun with it, do an online search for charities that support your friend’s interests.  If you’re not sure which organizations are reputable, look them up on Charity Navigator or the Better Business Bureau’s accredited charities.  If you don’t know the person too well, you can always look up the local food bank in their hometown.

Not everyone celebrates Christmas.  Why aren’t you calling it Slow Holidays?

The simple answer is this project is personal to me, and I was raised celebrating Christmas, so it’s what I know best.  The not so simple answer:  my Jewish and Muslim friends were subjected to the same Santa commercials, the same Christmas music in the malls, that I was growing up.  There is an undeniable presence of Christmas in our classrooms, town hall decorations, even the White House.  Even when it’s called “The Holidays” to include everybody, it still signifies hussle and bustle and buying stuff.  So alhough it may not always be secular or culturally appropriate, there does seem to be a universal experience of American Christmas.