Cathy & Darryl
We had to reign in our spending on everything, including Christmas, three years ago, because after a car crash Darryl had to go on a disability pension. Our key difficulty was that every Christmas year we had always had a big family get together with Darryl’s 2 brothers, who both work in the mines and are used to spending up big.
It was hard for us to not spend too much on our kids at Christmas so they wouldn't feel left out. We reached the point where for 2 years in a row we put it all on the credit card, and I realized that we were going into another Christmas and still hadn't paid for the others.
At the same time we didn't want to skip the Christmas celebration with his brothers because it is important to us and the kids together all had such a great time. We wanted to find a way to be able to afford it without being in debt forever.
We made a suggestion to his brothers that instead of doing the traditional present opening deal where we all turned up to his brother's house, we would each do our own individual household Christmas gift exchange at home and then all meet up together for a picnic tea in the park after lunch.
We suggested this idea to them in September, so that everyone could think about it and get used to the idea without the immediate decision making of Christmas planning on our backs.
We also spent some time talking about the advantages to his brothers in doing this - such as the kids not having to wait until everyone turned up before they could open their presents. This had always been a frustration for the kids. We also proposed that there wouldn't be any exchange of gifts between the adults and just a token gift for each of the kids.
There was some initial resistance from one of his brothers, and we were aware of how much our own situation was having an impact on how they celebrate Christmas, but ultimately they all realized the financial stresses we were under and that this solution was one that wouldn't embarrass us any further.