how many presents?

There was a really interesting discussion on a parents forum that I frequent about how many Christmas presents parents give their children.  As you would guess, the answers were extremely varied as the people on there come from all walks of life.

In my path to frugal/thrifty living, I have taken on some inevitable anti-materialism tendencies, I must confess.  I’d challenge you to find a true ‘thrifty person’ that doesn’t, though.  It’s simply impossible to live a thrifty lifestyle, which involves cutting down on the amount of ‘stuff’ you buy, and not slowly adopt that as a broader philosophical inclination.  Like my last entry, being thrifty isn’t just getting ‘stuff’ cheap, it’s actually cutting down everything and just not buying it in the first place.

To come back to my original point, I do hesitate slightly answering those sorts of questions.  My son has a huge number of toys at the moment (the vast majority were gifts last Christmas), things to do and clothes to wear. A large portion of these were gifts from family that would be bought for him regardless of the purchases we made as parents, so we have taken the decision to contribute to the toy supply as little as possible, minus a few well-planned and thought-about purchases (like the toy kitchen I have talked about – a large toy, but one that will last him several years and serve all future children!).  We also specifically asked for things he needs*, as I feel like if people want to give gifts, it would help us (and therefore him) the most if they were useful.  Does this sound cheap?  I hope not.

It’s a delicate subject, overall.  I don’t want to raise a child (children) that thinks happiness comes from stuff.  I definitely want to encourage imaginative play when he’s old enough and instil a ‘simple pleasures’ sentiment in our lives.  But also, having toys and playthings is important in our modern society.  My husband is slightly less inclined on these vaguely ‘hippyish’ notions (my label, not his!), but I think as Finn gets older G is seeing that he doesn’t actually play with a lot of the toys and the quantity is definitely not important to Finn.

As a total side note, talking about clothes up there has reminded me…Finn, at almost 2 years old, still costs us very little (I can’t think of a better way to phrase that sentence that doesn’t make him sound like a car or dog!).  I have yet to buy a single item of clothing in a store (i.e., new) for him.  He gets new clothes through unsolicited gifts from family (‘I saw this in the shop and it was so cute I had to buy it for him!’) or I acquire them used from eBay/charity shops/nearly new sales, etc.  As he gets older, he might get new shoes just because those are a bit harder to source, but at the end of the day, if he doesn’t care about where the clothes come from then why should I?  Except I did accidentally send him out in PJs earlier this week – because I had bought them at a nearly new sale, I didn’t realise they were pyjamas until our childminder commented as such!  Oh well, who’s to say what pyjamas really are, eh? ;-)

(I’ll bet you all are thinking ‘I got all the way to the end of this rambling post and she still hasn’t said how many Christmas presents they are buying!’.  The answer is 1, plus possibly some ‘stocking stuffers’ like socks/mittens/hat because he actually needs these things so they might as well be something fun to open on Christmas Day.  He got a really large toy for his birthday (the kitchen), so 1 is just fine for Christmas.  If he hadn’t gotten the big birthday gift, I think we probably would’ve gone for 2 or 3.  Last year I think he got 2 but I’m actually struggling to remember exactly!)

* I’ve sent out a very explicit email saying please do not buy him toys.  Books, clothes and arts & crafts stuff are things we have asked for, since the first 2 you can never have too many of and the latter we have very little and it’s an area he needs to develop as he gets older.