You can make your kids shit for Christmas. When I was a kid and we were poor my mom made us Barbie beds out of shoe boxes and bits of fabric and we loved the shit out of them. Didn’t really even know the difference.

One of my best Christmases as far as fun and magic goes was 1990. I got a stuffed troll doll and a book about horses (and a stocking of course). I know now my parents spent less than a hundred on each of us. And I know now that’s because they were carrying two mortgages at the time. Did not make Christmas any less for…

Loooool. Our family income is much higher. Is there something worse than a cheapskate? Because I guess I’m it. But hey, they won’t have student loans, they get to go on holidays, and they won’t have to support their elderly parents one day. MAGIC.

I think it also helps if there’s a plan for the entire Christmas Day. One of the reasons, I suspect, that so many parents go on a gift buying orgy is because they need something for the kids to do, and after unwrapping gifts they’re at a loss.

Yep, nobody likes to talk about the huge amount of energy, time, planning and MONEY that goes into a “simple old fashioned Christmas.” Much of which is generated by the female of the household. You don’t hear much about guys sitting around knitting booties (not that there aren’t men who enjoy knitting booties!)

Also, teaching a kid that hardship=betrayal and hopelessness is a TERRIBLE thing to do to them.

And she’s undercutting herself. There is no abstract and painless way to learn the world is fucked. That is an inherently painful lesson no matter what. Some people are much luckier that they learn it about Christmas presents and not about their family being slaughtered, but everyone learns it.

I think the real problem is that none of us feel like doing anything other than sobbing right now.

I had to leave this page. People are fucking ridiculous. As someone who is poor it rubs me the wrong way to see so many people defend their conspicuous consumption but whatever that’s America. But the fact that others want to criticize the ones who don’t? We fucking deserve trump. This culture makes me sick.

This is the weirdest back and forth.

Poor people shouldn’t have children? I now definitely agree with Ladyheatherlee’s assessment that your children will grow up to be assholes - but certainly not because of the amount of money you spend on them.

I had never heard of “something to wear, read, want, and need.” That’s cool!

No kids, but I grew up poor- and I looked forward to Christmas because my mom went out of her way to make it an experience. She would find all the free holiday events in the area and take us and buy small gifts for a dollar or less and do our own 12 days of Christmas. She’d make popcorn and we’d watch a different…

in this life, you can build up, or you can tear down...i’m going to assume our fair writer is simply in one of the first stages of grief about how much our world has changed, and is numbly despondent.

I haaaate having a ton of toys around. I don’t get parents that do this to themselves. Just more things to make a big ass mess. The less we have, the happier my kids are to tidy up.

Yeah, if you want them to build character, give them some responsibility and don’t go overboard with the gifts, but trying to indoctrinate them with your depression/angst/etc seems like a shit plan.

Frankly, that’s a horrible way to want your kids to perceive the world. They have a small window of time to enjoy their innocence. They don’t need the weight of world politics to erode their childhoods. This is an really indicative of a larger issue happening now. Seeing nothing positive and only the end of days isn’t…

Yeah, I don’t really get this ridiculously cynical essay. Your kids will experience the adversity necessary to build character soon enough without your conscious interference.

is a writer and graduate student in Montreal.

“There is a part of me that wants my kids to feel, at least in some relatively painless and abstract way, that the world is fucked.”