Best Of: Time to Think About-Christmas?

With the family Christmas in July party planned for today, I have been thinking a lot about Christmas*. I think that it is a good reminder to us all, especially in this time of rising prices and extremely high projected winter heating costs, to start considering our Christmas gift and travel plans early.

Maybe this is the year to start a name draw for extended family-they may be secretly relieved to not have the extra financial strain of 32 nieces and nephews to shop for. Or maybe those of you who feel Christmas shopping only belongs in the month of December may seriously want to consider buying gifts throughout the year as they are on sale-spreading the cost of the season over the next 6 months or so and avoiding that huge “what have I done!” credit card bill in January. If that isn’t your style you could at least look at starting a Christmas savings fund to have the money on hand when the holiday season hits.

A couple of other bloggers have been talking about this lately: Amy at the Motherload and Frugal Dad come immediately to mind (I’m sure there are more).

My husband’s family has hosted a “Christmas in July” party for the last 3 years.

Why Christmas in July? Well, for two reasons.

#1: Weather is often nasty in Upstate New York and New England (where most of Yankee Bill’s family lives) so travel is very uncertain in December.

#2: The pre-Christmas season is usually packed! There are only a limited number of weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas-and between church events, holiday office parties, neighborhood gatherings, and 2 sides of the family to visit (more if you’ve got any parental divorces to take into account). . . .well lets just say that removing one Christmas party and sticking it in relatively open July is a blessing.

Celebrating Christmas in the middle of the summer got me thinking-for a frugalite, this is actually a good time to start thinking about Christmas.

Now don’t get me wrong-I’m one of those people who hate rushing the holidays. I refuse to listen to Christmas carols or do any type of decorating until after Thanksgiving. Yet a big part of being frugal and saving money is planning ahead and buying things on sale. If I waited until after Thanksgiving to do my Christmas shopping I’d be paying top dollar for most of my gifts. It can really pay off to start thinking about the holidays early, as in 6 MONTHS early.

If this isn’t the way you normally plan your holiday purchases (and/or your holiday savings, oh by the way) then I would highly suggest that you try it this year. Sit down sometime in the next few weeks and take a good look at your regular Christmas shopping list. Ask yourself some of the following questions:

#1: Who do I know I need to shop for? (Don’t forget to list folks like school teachers etc if you normally buy for them, or a few “just in case” hostess type gifts if you have that sort of lifestyle. I’ve found that personally I really don’t NEED any “just in case” gifts.)

#2: How much money do I want to spend, approximately, on each gift (or in the case of direct family members, how much do you want to spend total. I know, I know. With the kids there will always be some new “gotta have” closer to Christmas itself for the kiddos on your list. If you want to be sure, you can wait-but just compensate in your budget for the fact that you’ll probably have to pay full price)

#3: What are some ideas for gifts, or some things that I know they like?

Once you’ve got a list, you can keep it in your purse or wallet. Then the next time you see something at a fantastic sale price, you can whip out your list and see if the item would work for anyone on your list. If so, buy it and make a note (so you don’t buy two gifts for the same person-believe me, when you start shopping early it is easy to forget what you’ve already gotten).

Another great thing about starting early is you have time to think about and implement some changes.

Are you spending too much money on gifts for friends or extended family? Well maybe it’s time to start a campaign for a change. Maybe your friends would be happy to either drop the gift exchange or agree to a $5 limit-they all may just be waiting for someone else to bring it up. Or your extended family may be happy to start picking names out of a hat instead of buying each and every of the 47 Aunts, Uncles and Cousins a gift.

In Yankee Bill’s family, we’ve been doing a “Yankee Gift Exchange” (also known as a Chinese Auction) for years. We place a $10 limit on gifts, with each of the kids getting their Christmas present then as well. We do, admittedly, buy Nana (YB’s mom) and Cousin Dom presents for the REAL Christmas, but otherwise our entire cost for his side of the family-all 25 of them, is less than $30. That’s $10 for the gift I bring to the swap, $10 for YB’s, and 2 gifts for the cousins bought at a deep discount earlier in the year. Quite the savings in money, time and energy compared to buying each person a gift.

And lastly, if you are a crafty type, you may need some time to actually MAKE all those awesome gifts you are contemplating for family and friends. Or else feel the need to hand-stamp all of your 369 Christmas cards that you send out annually. Here’s a piece of advice: Start now, trust me. If you wait until November rolls around, you’ll be a stressed out, unhappy mess before Advent is over! (unless you are one of those people who can whip out a sweater in 3 days-then by all means, wait until the last minute)

*Note: To those non Christians out there-no offense intended, as a Christian my focus is obviously on the holidays that I celebrate. The same sort of philosophy can be used to plan ahead for any gift giving occasions that you have coming up in the year-be it Chanukah, Samhain/Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, Birthdays or any other holiday that I am unaware of.