As the present buying season builds up into full flow, several people have asked me how I'm doing my Christmas shopping this year whilst trying to avoid buying unnecessary 'things'. Two months ago I had a chance for a trial run at present giving without buying things when two of my teens had birthdays. My son was happy with the promise of driving lessons and a big bag of Skittles (sweets) so no problem there. For my daughter I wrapped up a couple of books that I had bought for her already, and we gave her money to spend as we were planning a trip to London on her birthday. She liked the freedom of spending the money, but she did confess that she does like the excitement of unwrapping something that was chosen specially for her. So for Christmas I'm going to have to try a bit harder.
So here's my thoughts on what I could aim for this Christmas.
1) Experiences. Driving lessons, vouchers for the cinema or theatre, a promise of a meal out. These all fit perfectly into the doctrine of not buying physical stuff and focussing on doing rather than having.
2) Things that you know people need or are useful. Without giving the game away here, I've bought things for my teens as stocking fillers that I know they will use, plus little luxuries that I know that they will love which are consumable in some way - either edible or toiletries, either way they are useful and won't just be useless clutter.
3) Clothes. Again I've tried to make sure that these are things that my children want and are useful. No Christmas jumpers that only get worn once!
4) Books, games and music. I reckon that here you are mainly paying for someone's creativity, rather than something physical. In the era of downloads, this could be completely virtual, or even if it is a physical CD or game, it is easily reused if passed on to a charity shop afterwards, or even better, buy second hand in the first place if you can.
5) Buying ethically. So where I have bought actual stuff, I can try and direct my money well. So fairtrade chocolate from Oxfam, toiletries from Lush or Body Shop.
6) Buying second hand. Generally this is a good principle, although I haven't done any hunting round the charity shops this Christmas, that's mainly because part of the exercise for me is about not spending as much time shopping, but doing other things instead.
So that's the aim. I will report further on progress as the festive season continues!
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