If you find Christmas depressing you are not doing it right. (You spent money you don’t have on people you don’t like – stop that.)
Make spreading JOY your Christmas Tradition and you will find yourself and your family feeling . . . well, Joyous.
Don’t believe the ads and marketing – spreading Cheer costs virtually nothing, though it is priceless.
There’s still plenty of time to spread some Jolly around.
Have you been to a nursing home lately?
It’s a sad, depressing place. Until YOU brought your children with their smiling faces and did a little dance or sang a sweet song. You don’t need an invitation or a reservation – any nursing home in the country will welcome a smiling family with 30 minutes to say Merry Christmas or sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
My mother-in-law produces a Grandkid Christmas Pageant every year. Every kid gets to learn a part and participate. We took the show to a Nursing Home to spread some Christmas Joy this year.
Making your neighborhood safer with Christmas Cheer is a wise investment.
We let Ainsley play outside with her friends unsupervised. I know it’s a very old-fashioned thing to do. But, we do it for 4 great reasons -
1. We believe she can handle herself and every little bit of experience in handling herself in the neighborhood without supervision makes her better at handling herself.
2. We do not parent out of fear. We teach courage and parents have to go first.
3. We still believe in the overall goodness of human beings like our neighbors.
4. It makes her happy.
To make our neighborhood safer we go out into it and knock on doors and introduce ourselves. We delivered Christmas candles to spread Christmas Cheer. Zack, to his eternal remorse is not allowed out alone yet, but within the next few years he will be and twice this year the neighbors have brought him back after he escaped.
Knock. Knock. Hi, we’re Tracee and Jeremy and these are our children. Perhaps you see them playing in the street, riding their bikes, hanging out with their friends. We sure do appreciate you looking out for them and helping them stay out of trouble. We’re so happy we live in a safe neighborhood where people look out for each other’s children.
This actually cost me nothing. See, my mother’s neighborhood does this and she has been saving up the Christmas Candles delivered to her house for years. She’s allergic to the scents and could not use them. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Very frugal neighborhood gifts that you might try include Christmas cookies, cocoa, fresh baked bread, banana bread, candy canes, ornaments from thrift stores, etc. Do whatever is easiest for you.
Christmas Caroling to the town’s shut-ins.
Anonymously leave money for someone (in front of your kids).
Clear out toys and clothes we’ve outgrown to give to a family whose house burned down.
Light the Advent Candles as a family at church. Ainsley read a very long recitation and prayer perfectly.
Ainsley’s two grandmothers, eh hem I mean two sets of grandparents, pooled their Christmas dollar to get Ainsley a realAmerican Girl Doll.
Doesn’t Kit Kittridge look just like her?
It might just be an absurd amount of money to spend on a doll.
But, its like when my husband was researching our next phone plan and he kept trying to tell my father-in-law and I about other phones and all the “even better” deals and features.
But we want IPhones. We said.
It would be just like the time when we got a new computer that we could afford and it was a small PC. I hated it every time I used it. It was frustrating and annoying.
Yet, my used Macbook Pro makes my heart sing every single time I touch its keys.
The American Girl Doll is like that. It makes her happy every time she looks at it, holds it and thinks about it. Are there cheaper dolls? Sure. Dolls that pee and some you can take in the tub? Yeah. Could we get a knock off that look exactly the same for 1/2 the price? You bet. But, it is not the same. It’s not. No, it’s really not. You can say it is. You can try to convince her and yourself that it is. But, it’s still not.
She got it early. So NaNa could be there to see her face when she opened it. Unfortunately, my mother lives in Utah.
It’s a big deal - they don’t indulge her like this every year.
If you pop out an early gift it’s a bigger deal than one which gets swamped under the avalanche of other gifts from everyone on Christmas Day.
Also, I didn’t want that American Girl upstaging us and Santa.
The moral of the story?
* Sometimes the brand matters. Even a used or reconditioned one of exactly what we want is better than another brand on certain items. Factor in resell value.
* Pool money between relatives for THE thing.
* Don’t upstage each other’s gifts. Sometimes that means an early present is appropriate. The child really gets a lot more enjoyment out of an early present.
Oh, and if you’re sucking in anxiety this year sit down and count out all the other people who will be giving to your children. I count this as a frugal tip because it costs me nothing but mediation between two sets of grandparents.
Barbie hijacked “Feminism” and used a poor defenseless little girl and Amy Poehler to do it.
Oh, well, she did kill The Bratz and I’ll be forever grateful. My kids do enjoy her laptop and the pink VW Bug and the singing High School Musical Dolls, so perhaps I should just surrender?
I’d have no complaints with Barbie if not for this . . .
Evidence that girls are internalizing Barbie’s impossible body type.
Like you, I hate writing a random letter any corporation is going to ignore. It makes me feel almost as powerless as doing nothing. But, I LOVE knowing my letter joined thousands of other letters and made a serious impact. Read all this cool stuff the CCFC has already accomplished.
From a CCFC newsletter:
Are you distressed when Batman, McDonalds, and Lego partner to sell kids on fast food and video games? When Nickelodeon features the Bratz in a made-for-TV movie? When Elmo and Barbie morph into a “Barbie loves Elmo” toy?
Are you appalled when marketers spend billions of dollars advertising toxic brands and products directly to children – and then lay all of the blame on parents for the rise of marketing-related problems like childhood obesity, youth violence, and precocious, irresponsible sexuality?
Why not do something about it? Support the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the only national organization devoted solely to countering the harmful effects of commercialization on children. With your help, we’re making a difference. We rely on you because we will not compromise our commitment to children and families by accepting corporate funding.
We act on your marketing concerns. When a Boston father contacted us because Webkinz World, the leading social network site for young children, was accepting outside ads, we alerted the media and launched a letter-writing campaign. As a result, Webkinz now gives parents the option for kids to use an ad-free version of their site.
When a mom in Seminole County, Florida, alerted us to McDonald’s report card advertising at her daughter’s school, we made the ads a national embarrassment for the fast food giant. Our campaign for commercial-free report cards was featured on Good Morning America, The Colbert Report, and hundreds of newspapers around the country. As a result, McDonald’s agreed to end the program.
We’re reclaiming schools from corporate marketers. Schools around the country are are promoting reading and not consumerism with CCFC’s Guide to Commercial-Free Book Fairs. With our help, legislators and educators have made South Carolina the first state to ban all marketing on school buses. Working with local activists and parents, we’ve successfully stopped BusRadio – a company that plans on “taking student targeted marketing to the next level” – in school districts from Connecticut to California.
We’re countering the sexualization of children. After more than 5,000 emails from CCFC members, Scholastic, Inc. decided not to bring the highly sexualized Bratz brand back to school this year. When we caught BusRadio advertising 90210 – a television show chock full of teen sex and drinking – on its website for children as young as six, they began pulling the ads within hours. Our campaign to stop Children’s Hospital in Columbus from selling naming rights to the infamous Abercrombie & Fitch for $10 million launched a national conversation about the ethics of public health institutions partnering with corporations that undermine children’s wellbeing.
Help us stop the commercialization of childhood, advocate for policies that protect children from unscrupulous marketers, and take on the worst corporate offenders. Your tax-deductible contribution will allow us to continue to build a coalition of organizations and individuals who value children more than the bottom line.
Thanks to an anonymous donor, every contribution of $125 or more will be doubled from now until January 1st. Any amount you are able to give would be greatly appreciated. Please visit to support CCFC today.
$500,000,000,000: The amount of money in purchases that children under twelve influence every year.
$17,000,000,000: The amount of money spent to market to children, a staggering increase from $100 million in 1983.
$3,400,000,000: Revenue generated by the Disney Princess brand in 2006. There are 40,000 Disney Princess items on the market today.
1,200,000,000: Toys sold with kids’ meals at fast food restaurants in 2006.
20,000,000: Baby Einstein videos sold by Disney through 2006. The American Academy of Pediatrics reccomends no screen time for children under two.
200,000: The acts of violence, including 40,000 murders, that the average child will see on television by the time they are eighteen.
25,000: Ads on television the average 2-11-year-old sees on television every year, a figure that does not include product placement.
4,151: The number of product placements on the first thirty-eight episodes of American Idol.
Your community has free Christmas stuff. I’ve never lived in a community that didn’t. Do it. Participate. Don’t grumble. Put a smile on your face and sing Jingle Bells while doing it.
Ainsley was in the parade with her Brownie troop – we watched.
Look! Santa!
Our church did a Christmas Tree Forest and invited the town. It was beautiful.
Our Sunday School Class did a “Joy to the World” Tree. We had a potluck and decorated our tree together.
There was Living Nativity and they gave us free punch and cookies.
It was a really fun Christmas family-time weekend.
