by Lorraine Sears

Created on: February 13, 2011   Last Updated: February 14, 2011

There’s no denying it, Christmas has become too commercial.  Every year it feels like it’s starting just that little bit earlier.  The stores are decorated and stocked up with mince pies and puddings, Christmas crackers and cards—tempting us to buy—no sooner than the children return to school in September.  What’s truly ridiculous about this is that most of the perishable items have a ‘best before date’ that expires in October or November, long before it would be needed.

While the prudent, the thrifty and the organised may start their gift buying as early as the January sales and get berated for it.  Think for a moment.  Buying a gift when you see something someone will love or appreciate is surely better than bowing to pressure and buying piles of festive junk that appears in stores purely for the Christmas market.  Who really wants a box of industrially created embroidered hankies or a giant plastic duck in a Santa hat, or a gumball machine that saves pennies?  While these may create an impressive hoard beneath the tree and bring a moment’s novelty fun, what happens to them after Christmas?  They become dust collectors, drawer fillers, donations to the goodwill.  

As we approach Christmas, adverts on TV bombard us with offers on food and the latest must have toy for children.  ‘Make your Christmas this’, ‘make your Christmas that.’  Three for the price of two on your gifts; perfume, watches, jewellery, toys.  Where to buy the most succulent bird, the tastiest vegetables; flyers come with the mail and in magazines, newspapers are packed with yet more advertising.  From every corner we are bombarded and all of it is putting pressure on us to create the so called ‘Perfect Christmas’.  You can’t buy perfection. 

Christmas should be a time that we look forward to, not dread because of the shopping and the cooking and squeezing sixteen additional family members in.  If your Christmas plans feel like they are spiralling out of control do something about it.  Don’t let yourself be weighed down by the expectations of others to create a good Christmas.

Instead of running ragged round the shops this year, trying to make sure you’ve spent the same on each person or they all have the same number of gifts, why not try a secret Santa where each person buys one gift for one other, with

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