Christmas with No Presents?

by Colin Beavan (Yes Magazine article)

One family’s daring experiment: Christmas without all the stuff.

	Colin Beavan plays with his daughter Isabella at Washington Square Park near their home. As creator of the “No Impact Man” blog, Beavan and his family committed to living in the middle of New York City without making any net impact on the environment. Photo by Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine

If Christmas is about presents, then in 2007, my little family and I had no Christmas. I mean, we had the caroling and the uncle playing the piano and the cousins running around with my three-year-old, Isabella, and the grandfather coaxing her to sit on his lap and the good food.

We had, in other words, an amazingly good time.

What we didn’t have, though, was the average American’s $800 hole in our bank accounts, gouged out by Christmas-present spending. Nor did we have the credit card debt still unpaid by June. Nor the forcing of smiles for gifts we didn’t really want. Nor the buying of extra luggage to bring home those unwanted gifts. Nor the stressful rush of last-minute crowds at the mall.

Without presents, you see, we didn’t have the sensation that I, at least, normally associated with Christmas—the stress. And without stress or presents, it’s not Christmas, right? But of course it was. It was the best of Christmas, the part that, research shows, makes people happiest. It was all the upside without the downside.

Let me back up

For the rest of this article, please visit "Yes Magazine."