12 Tips For Creating Simpler Holidays
By Wanda Urbanska

1. Make Conscious Choices
You decide what constitutes a meaningful holiday for you and your family rather than shifting into autopilot and following our consumer culture’s pre-scripted plan for what you should do, be and buy.

2. Be True To Yourself
Try not to compare yourself, your celebration, your gifts or activities against some “ideal,” real or imagined ones.

3. Feel Free To Change
Just because you’ve always “done it that way” doesn’t mean you have to do it that way forever. Remember that the most constant reality of life is change and you will feel more active and alive when you’re creating something new.

4. Plan Ahead For The Holiday
Whenever possible, involve your immediate and extended family, and anyone with whom you plan to share the holidays. For instance, if you decide to reduce spending this year, call or e-mail family members in advance, telling them you plan to lower spending, for example, from $100 per recipient to $50 this year.

5. Avoid Spending Beyond Your Means
Do not be pressured by the culture around you – or even your closest friends – to compare dollar for dollar, bow for bow. When you’re selecting a gift or throwing a party, arrive at the dollar amount at which you feel comfortable and stick with it.

6. Consider Buying Gifts Year-Round
If gift-giving continues to be part of your holiday celebration, shop year-round. This will extend the holiday fun and take financial and shopping pressure off during the holiday season. Also, you can snap up something on sale and buy the perfect gift when you see it, rather than engaging in frantic, last-minute shopping excursions.

7. Shop Inside Your Own Home
Face it, most of us have more that we need or even know we have. Find something of significance and give it to someone you care for with a history attached.

8. Give Gifts Of Time And Talent
Give gift certificates for your services: a home-cooked meal for four delivered to your friend’s home; a massage to your significant other, redeemable when he needs it most; house cleaning or baby-sitting for the evening.

9. Give Experiential Gifts
That is vanishing gifts – gifts that don’t add clutter. Tickets to the Nutcracker, an art show, the theater or movie. If you cook or bake, give a loaf of bread, a jar of apricot preserves or some heart-healthy oatmeal-granola cookies!

10. Wrap Your Gifts In Comic Strips
This is a method suggested by my co-author Billy Romp in “Christmas on Jane Street” (Morrow, 1998). Or use second- (or third-) run gift wrap. Another eco-friendly option: those wonderful reusable cloth bags!

11. Give To A Worthwhile Cause
Make a donation in someone’s name. Write him or her and tell what inspired you to make this gift. Just as with a material gift, the best donation comes when you tune into the recipient’s philanthropic interests rather than giving something that you support.

12. Focus On Spiritual Matters
Capture the spiritual side of the holidays by reading religious scripture, prayer, study and reflection. Attend religious services.

Wanda Urbanska, a Simple Living expert is the author of, “The Heart of Simple Living: 7 Paths to a Better Life”.