Not sure I’m going to get that gift this year– or ever. But a group of Minnesotans is hoping to help. I attended Unity-Unitarian Church in St. Paul’s Black Friday at Church event this morning. Look for a story in the paper tomorrow.

The non-denominational group’s goal “is to launch the Christmas season as a time of spiritual reflection and renewal instead of frantic over-consumption.  This requires fighting back against an out-of-control consumer culture, clearing away the debris that Black Friday represents.”

I’ve long known about my tug-of-war between a simple, non-commercial Christmas and my desire for an over-the-top, gifts piled to the tree Christmas. But this event really made me think.

Maybe the reason I try to complete my holiday shopping before the chumps camping out at Best Buy on Thanksgiving at 10am (seriously, guys, were the deals that good?) is because I just want to get it over with. Once I’m done with my shopping, I can stop worrying about whether I bought too little or too much and just put it out of my mind until the big day.

This New York Times story about moms doing without designer jeans so they can buy their kids tons of presents made me cringe. Seriously, do editors come up with these stories just to get my goat? But there’s a little part of me that worries that maybe I am too overindulgent myself. And how do I influence overindulgent grandparents and distant relatives whose ideas about gift-giving don’t mesh with my own?

The fact that my kids have their birthdays in December complicates things a bit. This year, I bought each child roughly half a dozen reasonably priced gifts to divide between Christmas and their birthday. When I say reasonalbe, I’m talking LEGOS and art supplies, not Kota the Triceratops.

I know I’ll pick up some stocking stuffers here and there.

In all, I’ve spent $255 on their presents. Does that seem excessive?

How to you decide how much is enough? And has that changed this year given the economy?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Kara\'s finances, kids and money, spending. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.