is nature's way of telling us to calm down, rest, and bake excessively.

[dancinglights]

I am basically in denial about the immanence of Christmas/Yule/Solstice/Winter Proper. We had such an early, false-start winter off and on that I tumbled into seasonally-affected depression before my coping mechanisms of trees and lights and baking kicked in, and I've never really quite adjusted. I'm also kind of broke right now and many of my

Comments

[elenbarathi]

Ohhh, snow! *sighh* That's an excellent photo; I love the way it's almost monochromatic except for the russet leaves of that one sapling in the center - beautiful composition!

*hugs hugs* The more you romp in the snow, the more baked goods you can eat and still fit in your favorite pants. I'd call that win-win. Happy Yuletide, hon; "if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

[dancinglights]

Thanks! I'm quite proud of this one, and the galoshes that made it possible.

[ravenblack]

Our minimalism is making gifting hard here too. Gift ideas for me are almost entirely "thing that I already had that is broken or lost."

Another idea was that I should get cake coupons, wherein I say "Jessica, you must drop what you're doing and make me a cake now", and she could get "no I am not going to make a cake" coupons to use in response. Since two people buying each other gifts of equivalent value basically cancels out anyway, especially when they're using shared funds, I don't think that cancelling out would really be any different.

[dancinglights]

Most of my family has gotten big on gifts of consumables at a slightly higher grade than one would generally justify buying for oneself, particularly coffees and teas and fancy soaps and such. I definitely find it better than cancellation by gift card (which happens with pod's family sometimes) because it forces a bit of do-something-nice-for-yourself-no-really without accumulating Stuff.

Pod and I do 'experience gifts' sometimes, like tours and show tickets and high tea reservations, but I'm not sure how to wrangle scheduling things like that for anyone *but* him, who doesn't mind the ruined surprise. Could work for you two as well.

[ravenblack]

Yes, experience gifts (which kind of encompasses foods, drinks, etc. too) are an option we consider, but they can be a bit underwhelming since we mostly just do whatever we want anyway all the time! It makes Christmas more like a delaying punishment, as does the "replacing broken things" kind of gift for that matter - I have no Kindle for a month thanks to Christmas, whereas if there was no Christmas drawing near I'd have already replaced it weeks ago!

[dancinglights]

Hah, yeah, there's a bit of that too. Possibly my issues of Not Letting Myself Have Nice Things most of the time actually makes this easier.

[miss_adventure]

Lovely photo. Hurrah for snow!

As a minimalist, I can say that consumables are the gifts least likely to make me squirm: tea, coffee, baked goods.

[dancinglights]

Yeah, the older I get the more I understand fancier-than-you'd-buy-yourself holiday consumable gift baskets. Self-assembled coffee and tea ones are gift staples in all sides of my family, and I make family recipe cookies no one else left on my dad's side can manage. I usually find a couple other tiny things to throw in, but it'll be less so this year.

[kiarrith]

things have been so insane. I never got around to decorating for winter at all. And now that I'm leaving in a few days, not to return until Dec 28th...I doubt I will ever, at least this year
Rawr.
yay for wine and beers and teas.

[dancinglights]

Oh, I haven't done the tree yet or anything. Hopefully tomorrow. The best thing about Nightmare Before Christmas Tree is I haven't had to take down the Halloween decorations yet, and some of those are white sparkley light-up as well. This is basically the only set of holiday I ever bother with.