KRUGGEL: Canadians to spend less for Christmas ... Good!

I grew in a middle class household and we had a nice Christmas. We visited family. Gifts were nice, but not huge and not terribly expensive. No one would ever have gotten things like computers, laptops, phones, or whole gaming systems. Kids got a toy or two. Often we'd get a toy that all the kids shared. Adults got clothes, my dad would buy my mom a small piece of jewelry.

Christmas wasn't a spend-a-thon.

That was 40 years ago.

Today statistics, news reporting, and word of mouth tells us that people spend a lot of money on gifts. They feel compelled to make Christmas extra special. They'll spend hundreds, and sometimes a couple thousand dollars on gifts for their family members.

Like I said, whole gaming systems like a PS5 or an XBox get bought along with a few games. That's $1,000 or so right there. They'll throw in a new phone, a tablet, a laptop for even more money. I'm not even mentioning the vast quantities of food, alcohol, and restaurants that people spend on.

Nationally, a gross average gives us about $1,675 spent per person from the CBC article. I am assuming that number refers to adults, and not children. I'd feel more comfortable if that was per family. Still, that's a whopping number!

When did Christmas become an orgy of spending?

When did we stop just simply enjoying the holidays and turn it into a, "Who can buy the biggest, most expensive gift contest? Who can host the most impressive Christmas gathering?".

Hearing that Canadians will spend about 10% less this year is a good thing. They should spend less. People shouldn't be racking up massive credit card debt just to impress the people in their lives. Heck, the kids get a new toy and in about six months it will be sitting on a shelf gathering dust and six months after that'll it'll be in a closet or a box.

The stuff I remember from my Christmases growing up was having the time off from school, seeing family, playing outside, watching the holiday cartoons that came on just for that season, and of course the food. We didn't make vast quantities of food either. 

Why? 

Because we didn't believe in making so much food that some would get thrown out. There wasn't a few plates of desserts. There was a dessert.

We liked our gifts and we enjoyed them, but looking back on them they were secondary. It was the holidays themselves we enjoyed.

If people could get back to that two things would immediately happen: they'd spend a lot less money and they'd enjoy the holidays a lot more. Even better, when January rolled around they would not be dreading seeing their credit card statements.

I get the economic implications as why this is happening and the effect spending less will have on the economy.

The economy isn't good. Still, even if it was great, we shouldn't be blowing money like the world was ending on just one day to impress people and buy some love.

You know what? That's not a liberal, conservative, left wing, right wing, etc position. I think that is a universal position - at least, as I see it.

Let me close with this. 

As a kid my fondest memory of the Christmas season was this: my dad, my brother, and I would head out to get a Christmas tree. We lived on a farm for many years and part of it was forested. We'd walk through two feet of snow, sometimes three, to find the right tree. It was as cold as you could imagine and we still loved it. My dad would chop it down with an ax. The three of us, dad did most of the work, hauled it back to the little farm house.

That's what I remember.

No one has to spend themselves into a second mortgage to build a memory that'll last a lifetime.

So it is perfectly acceptable to spend a little less on Christmas.