A few years ago, I wrote an article for The Billfold (RIP) about a tradition my family adopted to help take some of the financial stress out of the holidays and to cutdown on buying/receiving unnecessary stuff. Instead of giving gifts to each family member we focus on the stockings, and each person contributes a little gift to each stocking. I wanted to share this article on our budget-friendly stockings in case you’re looking for some inspiration this year, as far as gift-giving goes…
You can read the full article here, and I pulled out the details explaining how we set up our first Stockings-Only Christmas below…
Growing up, opening our stockings was one of the best parts of Christmas morning — they were overflowing with surprises and our favorite candy, which is what inspired this idea.
To kickoff our first Stockings-Only Christmas, we decided to set a few guidelines to help everyone stay on track:
- Each person gave one gift per stocking (excluding their own)
- The budget per gift was around $15
- To have some fun with this new tradition and make it a group effort, each stocking included:
- 1 food or drink gift (think: gourmet chocolates or coffee, fancy oils, a bottle of wine)
- 1 home gift (delicious smelling candle, dainty bud vases, cute water bottle, art)
- 1 beauty or fashion gift (wool socks, pretty nail polish, cozy scarf)
- 1 homemade gift, if you’re feeling crafty (holiday garland, wreath, mini planted succulent, picture/piece of art in the frame and ready to hang)
- and 1 miscellaneous gift (gift card to her favorite coffee shop, his three favorite magazines, a best-selling novel, tickets to see a movie at their favorite theater)
Before everyone started shopping, we divvied up categories for each person. This took a little planning, but in general, if someone already had a specific gift in mind for someone, they took whichever category it matched with. For example, I’d found a great drugstore face mask for my sister, so I had her beauty gift covered, and everyone else picked from the remaining categories.
I remember the homemade gift category being a little tricky that first year. Making gifts isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But luckily, my mom is always up for a fun project, and she volunteered to do each of our homemade gifts the first year. Since we switch up categories each year, I did the homemade gift for two people the second year, and I made each of them a batch of chocolate chip cookies, from scratch.
Are you wondering if everyone actually stuck to the budget? I was also curious how we’d do, especially since this was our first time organizing something like this. That first year was great and everyone stuck to the plan. Since then, a few individual presents have snuck back in, which is mostly my parents giving us kids gifts (as parents will do). We’ve also adjusted the stocking budget a couple times (last year we upped it to $25). But the key to making this work for my family was staying flexible — if someone wanted to spend more on someone else, of course they could! — but also sticking to the budget as much as possible, which everyone was great about.
What do you think? Would you try these budget-friendly stockings? It’s a great way to do Christmas if you’re on a budget or just looking to switch things up.
P.S. This article was inspired by this post from 2014.