Several blogs that I read have had "holiday hints" given about what to spend per person for the holidays. Some say it's a percentage of income divided by the number of people. Some just give an arbitrary number per person.
For me, I'm trying to curb everybody's interest in giving things and instead giving time this year. You see, after much reflection, I've come to firmly believe it really is the events and experiences that matter. Nobody will even remember what the "thing" of any one gift is for more than a couple of weeks. But fun memories, entertaining antidotes, even shared misery is far more memorable.
This year, for instance, my family received a copy of the new "Clue Secrets and Spies" board game. It's a highish tech version of the venerable old "Clue" with a cute little black-light wand reader thing. Over all, it's quite a bit more complicated than the old one. It took the kids and I probably about three hours of reading/playing/fumbling around to get to a point where we thought we could actually play a game of it. It was pretty fun, but took more out of us to keep it all straight than the old version.
Those three hours will be far more memorable to both the kids and I than the ten minutes that it took to unwrap the rest of the gifts that they have/will receive. That is a very frugal/minimal thing to have. Not the game, but the memories. Gota love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment