Life and Laughter-I'll Be Homemade for Christmas
While Wall Street CEOs are busy selecting the perfect color of velvet for the seats in their pimped-out private jets, and celebrities are choosing which $25,000 Cartier watch to buy their poodles, the rest of America is trying to figure out how to pay for Christmas. Whether you were laid-off, downsized, pink-slipped or took a pay cut, it's time to get creative when it comes to roasting chestnuts, decking halls and jingling bells.
Remember when we used "imagination" as opposed to "Master Card?" I'm advocating some old-fashioned homemade gifts for friends and family. Give your child the Wilford Brimley Quaker Oatmeal Drum Set and he will be the envy of his classmates. Kaleidoscopes made from empty Pringles' cans will give your child hours of happiness. Extra-long maxi-pads make great slippers for grandma and Kellogg's cereal "The Boxed Set" is a perennial gift anyone can enjoy.
For little kids who don't know the difference, off-brand toys like Transporters, Deflecticons, Crappy Patch Kids and Bawrbie dolls will bring a smile to young faces. And when was the last time you covered a Campbell's soup can with macaroni and spray-painted it with gold paint and purple glitter? (Every home needs a pasta pencil holder.) Gift cards to Deseret Industries, dollar stores or health clinics make great stocking stuffers.
Demonstrate your hidden literary talents by giving your teenager a Christmas haiku to brighten their holiday:
It is Christmas Day
This is all I could afford
You understand, right?
(Disclaimer: your teenager might wad the poem into a tiny ball, dip it in poison and blow-dart it into your neck. And don't think they won't. But it's the thought that counts.)
Decorating your home for the holidays doesn't have to involve neon reindeer, strobe-light Santas or animated elves. A simple popcorn string, hung carefully on the tree, can remind you to never make a simple popcorn string ever, ever, ever again. Bloody fingers, smashed popcorn and frustration are all that your family will remember. However, a nostalgic, looped, construction-paper chain, advent calendar offers 24 days of excitement. Or 27 days if you make too many loops.
Maybe instead of an expensive Christmas tree, this year's topiary centerpiece could be a Christmas shrubbery or a Christmas philodendron. Ornaments crafted from old toothbrushes and empty toilet paper rolls add a quaintness to your holiday season. And you might just have to enjoy aluminum bells instead of silver this year.
Who needs wrapping paper depicting penguins with reindeer antlers (pretty strange inbreeding going on at the North Pole if you ask me) when you can drape your gifts in a reusable paper towel-themed wrap?
When I realized we wouldn't have the money to purchase the requested upgrades to iPods, iPhones and iEverything Else, I sat down with my teenage daughter to explain finances were a little tight this December. She totally understood.
Me: We're going to cut back this Christmas.
Daughter: K
Me: That means we won't be spending as much on presents.
Daughter: K
Me: I'm not sure you're listening.
Daughter: K
Me: Aliens just walked off with the puppy.
Daughter: K
So, while there might have been a star in the East that Christmas morn, most of us will be waking up on December 25 with black holes in our wallets. But take heart that while we're making do with re-gifted bath sets and two-year-old Christmas candy, government officials, financial leaders and American Idols are hard at work rebuilding our catastrophic collapse of Christmas currency by jet-setting off to tropical islands to bask in the glow of their bling and egos. Hey, it's the least they can do for us.
Have a Merry Frugal Christmas!
