WWTBAM Bored

My family and I have gotten to the point where none of us "need" anything so the holidays had turned into an exchange of gift cards, cash, and excessive gifts. Last year I put my foot down and instituted a per person max (for adults; kids still received gifts). I said $20 max OR something "from the heart". For example, I make platters of cookies for everyone that cost well in excess of $20 but they are homemade and therefore exempt from the limit. It went over very well and we actually enjoyed each other's company instead of focusing on 3 hours of gift opening.

Rob's family still did the gifts and he was frustrated with it after seeing what my family did. This year he and his mom came up with a great idea, I am VERY excited.

We are not going to exchange gifts at all - other than food, flowers, etc - the token stuff. We are going to get together and have the nomal holiday dinner and then after dinner, we are going to take turns putting money in a can. Each person can donate what they are comfortable with, and it will be secret. The idea is we should take what we would have spent on presents and put it in the can.

We are then going to count the money and sit down together to pick stuff out from the following catalog: http://www.heifer.org/

This organization allows you to purchase animals for developing countries to help give them a sustainable way of life. (I think there are also trees and plants but animals are the main focus). I just think it's such a great organization that I hadn't heard about until Rob's mom showed me the catalog.

My family is also doing the same thing we did last year. I am very happy with my family and Rob's for doing this. Not that there is anything wrong with exchanging presents, I just think our families in particular had lost sight of the meaning of the holiday and needed some re-centering.

That's a great idea, sunflower! My family picks names out of a hat at Thanksgiving, so there's only one person to get presents for.

Another good charity, if anyone else is thinking of doing something similar, is http://www.donorschoose.org Public school teachers ask for money for specific projects they would like to with their kids. Some of it just boggles the mind that it wasn't already in the budget-science teachers asking for safety goggles, teachers with child-size desks for high school students. With the economy the way it is, school budgets will probably be facing more cuts, and this is a way for teachers to go directly to the public.

I finally convinced my husband's family to stop giving us gifts last year. We have twice as many kids as everyone else and it just wasn't fair to them, I felt. All the adults stopped and just buy for the kids and his mother. My family stopped years ago because we just ran out of things even to suggest for the kids seeing as their birthdays mostly come in October and November. They all have too much stuff as it is.

I like the school idea. I was cleaning off my desk and saw all the little things the kids bring home on Valentine's Day and Halloween and other holidays that they never even opened, like little puzzles and pencils, and I wish we could organize a way to get the moms to make up the bags and bring them to one of the struggling schools instead. And this isn't just the basics, but the frills. I want to donate my rebate checks from BJs to the Teen Living classes at Rain Man's school, but I can't get the person in charge to answer an email asking if the school even has a membership card! They need food items so the kids can learn to cook, and it would be easier if they could buy as needed rather than have to store it as it was donated.

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You can buy a llama for someone

christie1111 wrote:You can buy a llama for someone

Llamas are pricey. Buy one for one of those yuppie outfitters who carry the backpacks into the wilderness so the yuppies don' have to.