Christmas on an extreme budget!

I was thinking about Christmas time and all of the expense that is incurred needlessly. Gift-giving has become so insanely rampant that we tend to get far too many people gifts. Is it really necessary to buy presents for your neighbor's brother's girlfriend? Or for the mailman's niece? Yes, those are exaggerations but I think you get my point. Don't get me wrong here, I am not adverse to giving.. not at all.. I just think there is a bit of overkill during this season. I do realize it is called the "Season of Giving" and we should all be a bit more generous all year long but enough is enough. This stuff has gotten out of hand! In our family alone, it seemed that each year the cost of the gift-giving was getting more and more exorbitant. It had to stop. A few years ago, I issued a challenge.. one dollar or less gifts! This did not apply to immediate family members but to grown brothers and sisters.. aunts and uncles ..nieces and nephews ..etc. I told them to "be creative", "think outside the box" or more importantly "don't go to department stores and malls!" There were the usual gripes and groans that it could not be done ..that you could not get a gift for one dollar or less that would be sufficient. I stood by my challenge! By Christmas it seemed that almost everyone wanted to participate.. even immediate family members. We were all in the "spirit" of things.. all creating gifts. And smiling! That year and every year since, I have received some incredible gifts. This entire group of family members did well adhering to the dare. They were creative ..not only in the choice of gifts but in making the present itself. Those who baked, made cookies, breads and other goodies. One niece that sewed made pot holders from scrap fabric and others crocheted scarves from remnant yarn leftover from other projects. My sweet daughter and her darling husband (fiance at the time) made the cutest ornaments that smell like cinnamon! My dear sister gave me a wall decoration made from a piece of wood she found on their property. To her it looked like a pheasant so she mounted it on a board and stained it.. gorgeous! One of my favorite gifts came from a precious niece's family. Her son came up with the idea of birdfeeders made from pine cones. Their property had plenty of huge cones begging to be used for a project. They smeared peanut butter on the cone and rolled it in birdseed. Before I hear.. "The peanut butter would cost more than a dollar! And the birdseed cost, too!" ..true. But they used old peanut butter that was donated to them after Katrina and bought the bag of birdseed at the local dollar store. Considering how many this made, each was well under the set price! And the birds loved them! This same family had a blast making the feeders. They worked together, had a wonderful time and created great gifts. Isn't that more or less what we should be doing during the holidays? Spending more time together in our homes and less time frantically trying to find the perfect (expensive) gift in a store crowded with irritable people rushing around trying to find the same. Hopefully, this one dollar or less thing will become a tradition that sticks around for a while. It does require a bit of thought, but the love is behind each gift. I think everyone had a lot of fun making the gifts and I know when the time came for them to be handed out there were masses of giggling and hilarious explanations of the thought behind each. It seems that this challenge was a success!