With Christmas on our immediate horizon, ‘tis the season of carols, Christmas songs and cantatas. I’m trying to soak up the Yule musical favorites while I can in the few days left before December 25.
But this year, with inflation pushing the price of everything out of sight, most of us are looking at our budgets and singing the Christmas blues with words that sound a lot like “Oh woe is my wallet, tra-la-la-la-la!”
If your Christmas songs have shifted into a minor key this year, I have a few suggestions to help you celebrate the season and survive with some cash left in your pocket to pay your January car note.
One sad song you might be singing in 2025 is “Oh, Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how lovely are thy $200 branches!”
If you’re a holiday purist and demand a live Christmas tree, you’ll find it a major investment this year, especially if you want one that doesn’t have a hole on one side that you could park a Buick in. And even if you find and shell out for that perfect tree, it’s not a good investment. It’s just going to sit in your den, dry up to become a fire hazard by Christmas Day, and be good for one season only.
Why not go with something cheap and plastic this year that won’t turn brown and have to be sucked out of your carpet one dead needle at a time in January? And it can be stuffed into the attic and hauled out next year. The money you save might just cover the electricity for that Revolving Santa you bought for the porch.
Is that “Jingle Bells” I hear, or is it one of those bell ringers trying to attract my attention to the donation kettle? The charities really get after us this time of year, and it is good to give to the less fortunate, but... give with caution.
If you’re like me, you get so many of those request letters with the sad-eyed puppies gazing out hopelessly wanting me to send them money for Doggie Doodles to get them through the holidays that I barely have enough cash left to support my own two mutts. This time of the year we’re confronted by every charity reminding us of so many needs that if we’re not careful we’ll give away all of our Christmas funds and become charity cases ourselves!
And if you do that, it will be sad-eyed YOU next year, gazing out from an envelope sent by some charity, asking somebody to send YOU money so that you can pay for the power to fire up Revolving Santa again in 2026.
But we need to do a little research before mailing off a donation. Some of these “charities” have become scams. They imply that they’re helping the unfortunate when they’re really helping their own executives who, with bigger donations from us, could make it into the Millionaires’ Club this year.
With money in short supply, are you sure you want to sing “Over the River and Through the Woods, to Grandmother’s House We Go?” this year? With gas going up for the holiday travel season, is it really worth $275 for several tanks of unleaded, just to drive to Granny’s Christmas dinner, eat burned dressing and dry turkey and be told that you shouldn’t have married that dumbcluck who drove you across the river and through the woods to clutter up her house?
If you must do the family thing, maybe you could drive over the river and Granny could drive through the woods, and you could meet at Dumpy’s Diner for the meatloaf special on Christmas Day. What you save on gas will buy lunch, and maybe Granny won’t nag you so much with those strangers at the next table.
And what about stuffing those stocking with budget busting gifts this year? Are you singing “I’ll have a Blue Christmas Without Yooo” — the Yooo being the money that was in your wallet before the holidays hit?
When your son goes around the house singing “Little Drummer Boy,” is he really hinting for a full $5000 set of Ludwig drums to bang on in his room?
When your kids sing “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things,” I’ll bet they aren’t thinking “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,” like the song says. They’re really thinking “Lululemon and gift cards and Kendra Scott under the tree, X-Box and Lazer tag and drones for me!!”
Take my advice. Lose those letters to Santa. Get sensible and get the kids those “warm woolen mittemns” — or at least some fuzzy acrylic ones. Buy them some $5 puzzles to keep them entertained on Christmas Day. You can explain that Santa ran out of X-Boxes and didn’t have room in the sleigh for a full set of drums.
You’ll be much happier when the credit card bill comes in January. And maybe you’ll even have enough money left to do some of your favorite things, like paying the rent and buying the groceries and starting to save for the holiday spending season of 2026.
If you can celebrate Christmas and still pay the bills this year, you might really mean it when you belt out that chorus of “Joy to the World”!
