Since my grandmother’s death, we’ve all sort of toned-down our gift-giving. A few years ago we started swapping names, only buying gifts for one other person of the family and putting a limit on how much we could spend. This year it’s been suggested we skip presents all together next year and adopt a family to buy for, or volunteer as a family at a soup kitchen.

I suppose we’ve all come to realize that we have so much already. Consumption has become a way of life and we buy ourselves things all through the year so that when we get to Christmas time nobody knows what they would want anyone to buy for them.

The Partner has finally gone 100% Anti-Present — when asked what he wants this year his stock response is “Nothing. Don’t buy me anything.” He doesn’t even want to buy things for our family and friends.

On Thanksgiving, a friend of my parents called to wish us all a happy holiday. His wife was staying the night at her mother’s so that the women of her family could plan which stores they were going to hit up in which order on Black Friday, waking up at 3am to stand in lines. I’ve never shopped on the Friday after Thanksgiving because I don’t think I could handle all the crazy people with their elbows cocked.

I guess I don’t know what this holiday has come to mean for me, except as being another time during the year in which my whole (or nearly whole) family comes together to share food and conversation. Santa Claus went out the door about the same time as God, and I don’t really want to spend a lot of money on things the people in my life probably have no real need for.

While this won’t be a Buy Nothing Holiday, it will be a Buy Not Much Holiday. I’m busting my crafty ass into gear and am making things for my closest friends and those family members who have requested certain knit items. So there’s the buying of frames and skeins of yarn and embroidery floss involved, but that should be it.