Our Family’s Weird, Wasteful, Stupid Christmas
We are blessed beyond belief, so you’d think the Christmas spirit would be easier to come by.
Each year, Christmas becomes a bit more draining, daunting, and downright depressing. Allow me to set the table for you so you understand our situation. In my household, it is just my wife and I, no kids, one dog. We’re firmly upper middle class, we want for virtually nothing, we don’t live paycheck to paycheck, we don’t know what “difficulty” is any longer, only inconvenience. We’ve had some bumpier times, my wife more than me, but entirely in our past. We exchange with just one other family, my folks, because they live closest — so just Mom and Dad. My Wife and I are not religious — frankly, I don’t know what we believe anymore. I was raised and baptised Catholic, got my first communion, but later rejected a lot of their beliefs. I turned non-denominational, and then ultimately agnostic. A rough time in high school drew me back in via a youth group and I became extremely Catholic — I mean extremely Catholic, I prayed the rosary on the daily, the chaplet of divine mercy, wore scapulars, went to Mass weekly, confessed regularly, I was all in. College turned me atheist and Kabbalist/Bhuddist curious, whatever that might mean. Now, well over a decade later, I am back to agnostic, but there’s some resonance remaining in my traditions of youth. Suffice to say, I don’t think Christmas matters in the conventional sense, it wasn’t at all when Jesus was born, I don’t know that I believe in Jesus or God, I don’t know that I don’t believe, but I definitely don’t think Christmas as we observe it in America it is “about” God or Jesus, certainly not in today’s world. But it is about something and whatever that is, has the potential to be special, regardless of the history or reason behind it.
My wife is also agnostic, with a simpler backstory, she was raised Christian and just slowly fell away from it the less she saw evidence of God’s grace and the more she saw bigotry and hatred seeping into the many Christians in name only. My wife is extremely liberal and has no patience for hypocrisy. My parents are both Christians, no longer Catholic, and take their belief in God very seriously, and albeit once somewhat liberal, now lean conservative, sometimes harmfully so, a depressing commonality in many elders. Anyway, now that you have the history, you will hopefully see that with respect to Christmas, there’s a zero percent chance we can be convinced to make it a “Jesus first” holiday — we see it as Jesus inspired at best. Regardless of the true reason for the season, that’s not our reason, and we see little to no evidence of that being the foundation for much of what goes down during Christmas (maybe we should just call it Decemberween?) and we reject that Christmas (again, as we know it) is anything other than a pagan holiday co-opted by Christianity, and then co-opted again by almighty capitalism, a force that often seems to rival any God imaginable. I’d be open to a “Jesus first” holiday, were I religious, in the actual time frame of when Jesus was believed to be born. Then again, were I religious, it would be “Jesus first” every day, would it not? There really is no firmly established precedent for celebrating the birthday of someone who is deceased, so at this point we are leaning on traditions, at best. I’ve also thought about abandoning Christmas proper and going the Boxing Day route as that feels a bit more aligned with what is actually happening.
So, what is Christmas then, to my wife and I? I’ll try and rank my best guesses at what it means to us based upon what seems to get our attention as well as gets us jazzed:
- A time to bask in cozy traditions (the tree, seeing lights, snow, decor, childhood holiday movies)
- An opportunity to help those in need or who are deserving
- Giving and getting, good old fashioned capital C capitalism, though more the thought around the meaning than the material value
- Reconnecting with family that we don’t often touch base with
- Spending time with our immediate families (notice how this is near the bottom of our list, we’re fairly happy being loners and doing our own thing, though without holidays we’d see them a lot less, so we definitely like this factor)
My favorite item on this list, by far, is item 2 — nothing makes me happier than making a difference in someone’s life, sharing something unique and special with them, and ideally, being able to see their reaction. I am totally happy being anonymous, I don’t need any credit or anything, but I do at least like to see the aftermath, so it doesn’t feel like I am just pitching money and effort down a black hole. I think my Wife is quickly coming around to that as well, as this has become a staple of every Christmas and we’ve tried to gradually weave it in more and more.
But, let’s talk about the weird dysfunctional part — the gift giving within my family. Oh man… the gift giving. So like I said earlier, I’m doing alright for myself, I have few wants — this is because whenever I do want something I weigh the choice, and if it makes sense, I go get it. Same goes for my wife, more or less, with a bit more restraint, simply because she’s essentially “retired” and her only “job” is to enjoy her life with her dream dog. She does of course help around the house a good bit as well, but not by any means in the 60’s “tradwife” style or anything. As a result, while she is welcome to spend whatever of my money she wants to, I think she tends to treat it a good bit more tenderly than I do, asking before using it , and instead spends freely from “her” money, which is an amount I give her each month to cover her own expenses and then some. So the dynamic right there is weird — right? Because any Christmas gifts I get are really being bought with my money, which is only loosely “earned” at best. So there’s this mental game involved where I have to pretend the above isn’t exactly what is happening. Believe it or not, that’s actually the easy part, and has been a comfortable adjustmet, because I think the effort that goes into finding and giving good gifts often outweighs the money spent, and my Wife has gotten me some stellar gifts over the years.
Where’s the problem then? Enter my parents; each year we say we want to make it “easier” and “smaller” — but I remain the only one who is able to play by the rules, which are admittedly a struggle even for me, but one that I think is important if we’re to ever reign things in. My wife spoils the hell out of me because she doesn’t feel I spoil myself enough and she’s grateful for the life I’ve given her. I spoil her similarly, just not always all at once. My Dad doesn’t actually do any shopping but was the primary earner during their working years. My Mom gives from the both of them, so whenever I talk about Mom, she’s the face of Christmas when it comes to my parent. My Mom’s philosophy is “oh just one gift would be boring” — so there’s this weird guilt about having too anemic of a Christmas. She has made it clear she loves having stuff to open. My wife does too. And I mean who doesn’t? I enjoy “stuff” as much as the next person, but it doesn’t need to be wrapped, a surprise, or under the tree.
This year I’ve tried again to make things “smaller” and got an “agreement” with my Mom that we would. Of course this took substantial negotiation about what “smaller” means — does it mean we set a spending limit? I said that money isn’t the issue, that it’s about effort and quantity. Then we had to talk about that, as in what specifically about each. The effort regards the way we do Christmas, there’s the list making, which honestly takes a lot out of me, again, I don’t want for anything hardly, so I have to invent a bunch of things I do want so that Mom knows what to get me. My wife doesn’t need my list, she has all the time in the world to figure me out and pick out great gifts. My wife’s list gets slaughtered by my Mom immediately, leaving me with nothing to pick from, and, it’s just silly. So, completely silly.
Meanwhile, my Mom’s list is all stuff she wants but doesn’t really have a great use for (I am looking at you “peanut butter stirrer”), and things I get her have a history of staying in their boxes for weeks if not months. She’s also got a bit of a hoarding issue, and some long standing changes she’s wanted to make in her life. So she likes to put things like exercise equipment or curtains on the list, but has no place to put said equipment, has these grand plans for her living room that will never happen that make picking curtains impossible. I can’t really surprise her with anything like that where it would make a real difference, I can only add to the same piles of things she hordes as it is, and it is endlessly frustrating.
In an effort to avoid this, and to make it so we’re not literally buried under gifts in the couch trying to open them I recommended a gift limit and a spend minimum but a focus on the limit vs the money aspect. I said we should all spend at least a few hundred, because then we are playing in the same ballpark and being fair with each other, knowing we could easily double that, but trying not to make pressure to do so. I kept emphasizing we need to focus on quantity of gifts, so that things could feel manageable, and we wouldn’t need to keep digging to find stuff for eachother.
In the end, I stuck to it, getting about 4–6 gifts per person. Folks who got a bigger thing or two got small things for everyone else. But, buying in this fashion was very hard, because neither my Wife nor my Mom’s list had 200+ dollar items on it that would make for easy larger gifts, so instead, it was difficult to get up over 300 without buying out the whole list. In essence, that’s exactly what Mom did for my Wife, leaving me with little but fumes to work with. My Dad’s list was fantastic as per usual, and I picked up an awesome gift for him without even needing it, because he’s very good at making his desires plain and not hyper specific. My Mom’s list was as bad as my Wife’s and Dad was also working off it. Despite the nonsense, I am trying curtains this year, to take a stand and try and make it happen — but it’s “one less gift to open” as Mom likes to point out about anything that can’t be unwrapped, as I can’t just buy her curtains on a whim, because she can’t pick them out. So instead the gift is shepherding her through the process and coming out the other side with custom curtains for her weirdly huge window situation.
But, only I stuck to it. My wife spoiled me from the looks of it (so badly so that I felt compelled to buy more for her so I didn’t look like a jerk), my Mom I know overbought for my Wife and therefore presumably me as well. So… what’s the point? Nobody ever sticks to any limits. We’ve talked about having a vacation based Christmas, and skipping gift giving almost entirely — but we’ve had cold feet regarding taking any trips due to the frustrating endurance of COVID. And this whole thing just feels ridiculous — like I am complaining because we have too much money and time and don’t know how to use it. The easy answer is use it on other people, people who need things, which is what I love to do. So each year now we’ve adopted a family, and shown them a Christmas that is as big as ours if not bigger. Buying for the adopted family is a joy — it’s different stuff, they always have clear wants, and the things they want you know won’t go to waste. Giving within the family just feels wasteful. Still, there is some appeal to it that I’d rather not see be entirely lost — it is nice to spoil each other and giving and getting some gifts does feel good, we just fail to find a way to reign it in, year after year. As a result, Christmas feels more like a performance, a thing where I have to make sure I am feeling healthy enough (I’ve got some chronic GI issues that stress does not help, and holidays are always stressful) to do whatever rituals are scheduled, where I have to guess what people want when they can’t be bothered to make suitable lists but expect me to have one, where I have to buy enough, but not too much, not too many, but not too few. It’s crazy. I am putting items on a list and stopping myself from getting them just so someone else can shop for me, and I am doing the same for them. Lists kind of making gift giving stupid, and the only redeeming factor I can think of is that it lets you know what other sorts of things people might want, or lets you pick a nicer version or whatever. But, we’re all doing well enough to generally go get what we want, so leaving it up to chance just means we’re likely to get a version of something we’d rather not have.
I don’t know what the right answer is. I know things have gotten out of hand, I know it’s not what it is supposed to be, and I know giving to those who are not as fortunate is a dramatic improvement in terms of what feels truly “good” whereas giving within the family feels quite wasteful and performative. But no matter how much I lean into the prior, the latter still needs to happen, my Wife wants it, my parents want it, and so I play along, as I am the only one who is fairly indifferent. I think getting gifts feels nice, but it’s almost like eating too much candy. It keeps tasting great but you start to have so much sugar your throat burns and your body feels squirmy and weird. Eventually your stomach hurts. I think Christmas should be something modest and surprising, no lists. We should either set a low limit (say 150) and if we get the other person a sucky gift or two, oh well, or we should set a higher limit (say 3–500) and make sure our gift is really great. Instead we have a high limit for my parents to buy off my list, and me to put some thought in and get them things that they’ll end up liking because somehow I know them well but they don’t know me. I use their lists some for sure, because it keeps it fair, and I demand lists because I need to make one. But there has to be a better way than this. My wife and I can figure something out, but it’ll never be just her and I.
For now, I plan to just grin and bear it each year. This is firmly a first world problem and my parents aren’t getting any younger — there will come a time, probably within the next decade, where this kind of gift giving isn’t even possible. I know they won’t even be here forever, so, I take that into account too. Maybe then I will look back upon these times fondly, it’s always easier in hindsight to tune out the frustration. I instead put my heart and effort primarily into gifting those outside the family, since I know that will have the impact desired. And, in the broader sense, I keep trying to think of how absurdly difficult it is to control the world around us, and focusing on seeing the good in the things that I do have. As I said at the outset of this article, I am immensely blessed and appreciative, I just wish we didn’t literally create stress and obstacles for ourselves all for this weird performative thing. I dunno, maybe we should celebrate Black Friday and all buy a bunch of crap and sit around and open it together to see what we all got, and use that as inspiration for a modest Christmas — I love the idea, I doubt I could ever get it to stick. But, if we could de-commercialize it some, simplify it, and make things less based on lists and requirements, it could feel so much more special and magical. I wish we could also make it less of a big deal overall, so I wouldn’t dread it for weeks prior and pray my guts don’t give out just prior or in the middle of it. The last thing I want is to ruin Christmas with a trip to the ER.
How about you all? What are your Christmases like? Do you ever find yourself in a similar situation?
