For the past two Christmas’s our family has done an op-shop/trade aid/gifts for life Christmas. Now that we’re older the idea of spending money on gifts just cos that’s what you do at Christmas when we pretty much already have everything we need seems silly. Why do we spend money on stuff we don’t really need meanwhile kids on the other side of the planet starve?
So mums great idea was an op shop Christmas. We spend the money we otherwise would on a Gift for Life or something similar and buy each other something from an op shop. It’s caused us to be really creative and have a lot of fun with what we get for each other. This would also be a great idea for a family who don’t have the luxury of spending extra money on Christmas.
Last year I took the 4 kids I look after to an op shop cos I needed to do a bit of last minute shopping. They ended up finding presents for each other. the most expensive gift as about $2, and everything they got was either new or had a special character to it.
So if you don’t mind buying stuff that someone else has already used then this idea has lots of potential. What a great way of teaching kids about the value we put on material things. Gift giving doesn’t have to be about how much you spend or where you get it from to be valuable. It’s the time, effort and thought that makes it special.
I like this idea a lot! 🙂 Now I just have to convince my family that we should do it..