Hello together,

Christmas is approaching ! While this, especially for the children, is a cause for joy, it triggers one thing above all for many: stress. For me, questions were constantly asked like:

• Who needs to be gifted?
  • For large families, this alone can become a problem. I know families who don't spend Christmas in the big circle just because it's either financially or logistically a problem for all the gifts.

• What do I give her or him?
  • In the best case, you get one or more concrete wishes mentioned (keyword wish list). But I've never experienced in adults.
  • Normally you are perplexed, get one: "I don't need anything." and then resort to money or give away the third cinema voucher in a row.

• Is my gift appropriate?
  • This leads to such great dialogues as: "Oh thank you for the 30€ drugstore voucher. I hope you are happy about your 25€ Amazon voucher too." while you think: "Damn I would have taken 30€, but the card from Amazon that I printed out very quickly before looks so great, it will certainly rip out the 5€ difference."

For these reasons, we have already proposed the following for our Christmas with the family last year:

• The hosts get a little attention.
• The children are of course also gifted.
• Otherwise we give each other nothing but a nice evening.

Of course, we have to discuss this openly and cannot simply dictate it. And not everyone was enthusiastic about it.

But in the end everyone agreed, even the "This is not a real Christmas and what do we do all evening?" faction was persuaded to try it at least once.

And it was this group that asked me recently: "You, Christmas last year was great, so without the gift stress. Do we want to do it again this year?"

I wouldn't mind. On the one hand you can save hundreds of €, on the other hand you don't get any stuff in exchange that you might not need and then have to resell or return.

And on the other hand, the pre-Christmas season actually becomes for me to the anticipation of Christmas and not to the shopping chase (and yes: online shopping can also be stressful).

In an age where I can order everything I need at any time of the mouse, I think our gift culture is long outdated.

Give yourself time and attention ! Christmas is the ideal setting for this. Other gifts are overrated.

That was the word for Sunday my blog post on the first Advent. I wish you a nice Sunday.

How do you handle this with the gifts? Similar? Or do you have other approaches ?