So, apparently it’s a low brow thing to spend a lot of money at Christmas?!

[Anonymous]

I would never tell anyone how much we spend on gifts. Never.

My sense from my wealthier friends and family is they downplay it. “We don’t go overboard” followed by a very short list of expensive things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some people who clearly have more money than we do (based on house size, new cars etc . . .) and who if I go to their house their kids have all the stuff my kids get and more. But if we talk about what my kids get for Christmas or birthday, they make it seem like my kids get way more. So, I assume that since my kids are more middle class, things that we might think of as special and gift worthy they just get during the year? I am not sure.

Like I know parents who swear they never spend more than $100 on Christmas, but their kids have nicer bikes than mine, and they have the same Nintendo Switch mine do, and their kids play an instrument that’s not rented and bring their own skates if we ask them to go ice skating with us. All of those things have been Christmas gifts for my kids, and cost more than $100, except maybe the skates.

Not that I care, but I do wonder.

Anything the children need throughout the year we buy it as needed. If they need a new violin , pajamas , shoes , iPad, laptop, clothing or ski equipment we don’t give that as a gift. The kids would not be excited for a snow board or musical instrument.

For Christmas we simply give them what they truly want. We don’t go overboard.

I don’t consider clothing/pajamas gifts usually but when my older kids want $200 sneakers those are absolutely gifts to them and so are electronics or a snowboard but not the musical instrument if it’s needed for their classes or school. I think with more wealthy people they don’t need to spend that much because they already have it all. I would never want my kids to not be excited if they were getting a new iPad or snowboard. I could buy those things year round but then what would my kids consider gifts if they’re used to getting iPads year round?

$200 sneakers.... ok.

[Anonymous]

So PP seems to say rich kids are such spoiled brats they don’t consider receiving expensive items anything special. And that’s why fewer gifts. I would never aspire to that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some people who clearly have more money than we do (based on house size, new cars etc . . .) and who if I go to their house their kids have all the stuff my kids get and more. But if we talk about what my kids get for Christmas or birthday, they make it seem like my kids get way more. So, I assume that since my kids are more middle class, things that we might think of as special and gift worthy they just get during the year? I am not sure.

Like I know parents who swear they never spend more than $100 on Christmas, but their kids have nicer bikes than mine, and they have the same Nintendo Switch mine do, and their kids play an instrument that’s not rented and bring their own skates if we ask them to go ice skating with us. All of those things have been Christmas gifts for my kids, and cost more than $100, except maybe the skates.

Not that I care, but I do wonder.

Anything the children need throughout the year we buy it as needed. If they need a new violin , pajamas , shoes , iPad, laptop, clothing or ski equipment we don’t give that as a gift. The kids would not be excited for a snow board or musical instrument.

For Christmas we simply give them what they truly want. We don’t go overboard.

I don’t consider clothing/pajamas gifts usually but when my older kids want $200 sneakers those are absolutely gifts to them and so are electronics or a snowboard but not the musical instrument if it’s needed for their classes or school. I think with more wealthy people they don’t need to spend that much because they already have it all. I would never want my kids to not be excited if they were getting a new iPad or snowboard. I could buy those things year round but then what would my kids consider gifts if they’re used to getting iPads year round?

$200 sneakers.... ok.

Why the “...ok.” These are on my teen son’s list. Jordans and VaporMax shoes both $200 and over. He has claimed this is all he wants for Christmas but I think it is ridiculous and would not buy them outside of being a gift.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So PP seems to say rich kids are such spoiled brats they don’t consider receiving expensive items anything special. And that’s why fewer gifts. I would never aspire to that.

I would never buy a child $200 sneakers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some people who clearly have more money than we do (based on house size, new cars etc . . .) and who if I go to their house their kids have all the stuff my kids get and more. But if we talk about what my kids get for Christmas or birthday, they make it seem like my kids get way more. So, I assume that since my kids are more middle class, things that we might think of as special and gift worthy they just get during the year? I am not sure.

Like I know parents who swear they never spend more than $100 on Christmas, but their kids have nicer bikes than mine, and they have the same Nintendo Switch mine do, and their kids play an instrument that’s not rented and bring their own skates if we ask them to go ice skating with us. All of those things have been Christmas gifts for my kids, and cost more than $100, except maybe the skates.

Not that I care, but I do wonder.

Anything the children need throughout the year we buy it as needed. If they need a new violin , pajamas , shoes , iPad, laptop, clothing or ski equipment we don’t give that as a gift. The kids would not be excited for a snow board or musical instrument.

For Christmas we simply give them what they truly want. We don’t go overboard.

I don’t consider clothing/pajamas gifts usually but when my older kids want $200 sneakers those are absolutely gifts to them and so are electronics or a snowboard but not the musical instrument if it’s needed for their classes or school. I think with more wealthy people they don’t need to spend that much because they already have it all. I would never want my kids to not be excited if they were getting a new iPad or snowboard. I could buy those things year round but then what would my kids consider gifts if they’re used to getting iPads year round?

$200 sneakers.... ok.

Why the “...ok.” These are on my teen son’s list. Jordans and VaporMax shoes both $200 and over. He has claimed this is all he wants for Christmas but I think it is ridiculous and would not buy them outside of being a gift.

That is ridiculous even as a gift.

[Anonymous]

For a teen boy $200 sneakers are not ridiculous! That’s what he wants! When we were teens those same shoes were popular gift items but back then they were more like $100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would never tell anyone how much we spend on gifts. Never.

My sense from my wealthier friends and family is they downplay it. “We don’t go overboard” followed by a very short list of expensive things.

I also think it’s easy to underestimate how much you spend - especially if it has no impact on your budget. Even “small” $20 presents can add up quickly. Books and clothes also get expensive and don’t make as much of a visual impact as toys so it’s easy to buy more than you intend to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You people have so many issues. Christmas is about your family and your children, not signaling wealth or superior morals or minimalism to anyone else. I grew up getting about a dozen presents and my kids do, too. It’s fun to have one day where you are almost overwhelmed by the number of gifts. The chaos and magic of Christmas morning is very special to us. I couldn’t care less what you think that says about me or about my bank accounts.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rich piles are smaller, but more expensive. Middle class piles are bigger, but cost less.

Often true. Something not really getting mentioned—the rich take big trips for christmas and holidays and birthdays. Toys are just things they have.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it's necessarily true to say that rich people spend *less* on Christmas (a trip to the Caribbean or skiing or whatever is $$$$) but I DO think it's accurate to say that they spend *differently* on Christmas than LMC people -- with LMC there seems to be a big emphasis on STUFF and having lots of THINGS (read: plastic toys) to put under the tree for the kids to open; whereas with UMC/UC it's more about high quality things and experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's necessarily true to say that rich people spend *less* on Christmas (a trip to the Caribbean or skiing or whatever is $$$$) but I DO think it's accurate to say that they spend *differently* on Christmas than LMC people -- with LMC there seems to be a big emphasis on STUFF and having lots of THINGS (read: plastic toys) to put under the tree for the kids to open; whereas with UMC/UC it's more about high quality things and experiences.

Yup rich people gift “experiences” that are worth far more than any mound of toys under the tree (ex fancy vacations, lessons or entertainment).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You people have so many issues. Christmas is about your family and your children, not signaling wealth or superior morals or minimalism to anyone else. I grew up getting about a dozen presents and my kids do, too. It’s fun to have one day where you are almost overwhelmed by the number of gifts. The chaos and magic of Christmas morning is very special to us. I couldn’t care less what you think that says about me or about my bank accounts.

Thank you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/opinion/us-poverty.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
+1. Charles blow has a really nice op dc in the New York Times about growing up poor.

In the days before Christmas we loaded our meager things onto the flatbed of my grandmother’s husband’s pickup truck and ferried them across town to our new home. On Christmas Eve, as we stood in a nearly empty house, a call came. It was my grandmother calling from our new house.

She said Santa had just stopped there.

My brothers and I ran out of the house into the cold stillness of the night, jumped on our bikes and raced through the town’s streets toward the new house. My mother trailed us in the car, her headlights illuminating the way for us.

We burst into the house, eyes aglow, short of breath, mood electric. Gifts ringed the Christmas tree. Nothing major; we were poor.
My mother had worked at a poultry processing plant, dismembering chickens on an assembly line before getting a job as an office assistant at the high school, taking night courses to finish her degree and eventually landing a job as a teacher.

But that one salary had to finance a family of young boys in school and an old man who couldn’t work.

We struggled. Many of our toys came from foraging rummage sales or picking through heaps of trash at the city dump.

My mother, being a resourceful and industrious woman, planted and gardened and bought some pigs and a calf. We would be poor, but we wouldn’t be hungry. I think part of her determination to make our new life work was also to prove all the folks in town wrong: the one who warned that half-a-man was better than no man, the ones who thought my mother was trying to reach higher than her station.

That is how I grew up: working a garden and chasing runaway hogs that rooted out of their pen. I grew up watching my mother make quilts so that we wouldn’t catch a chill from the winds that whistled through the drafty house. I grew up watching my mother clipping coupons and stretching two bags of groceries over two weeks.

This Christmas, please remember the people like my family: the poor, the people whose lives took a turn, those starting over, the fractured families, those working hard but not quite getting ahead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's necessarily true to say that rich people spend *less* on Christmas (a trip to the Caribbean or skiing or whatever is $$$$) but I DO think it's accurate to say that they spend *differently* on Christmas than LMC people -- with LMC there seems to be a big emphasis on STUFF and having lots of THINGS (read: plastic toys) to put under the tree for the kids to open; whereas with UMC/UC it's more about high quality things and experiences.

Of course, if you have more money, you can afford to buy "high quality things" and if you don't, you can't. That's simply stating the obvious.

I already posted, but it seems like the LMC and under kids have it a lot better at Christmas than wealthy kids -- they're excited to get the pile of "STUFF" that wealthy adults look down on and wealthy kids are "over." I'm glad they get to enjoy that. It's also fun to give to charities that help kids have "STUFF" and lots of "THINGS." But this is a DCUM bubble only -- based on TV shows and ads and comments from wealthy people on talk shows, I don't think giving kids piles of "STUFF" and "THINGS" is going to end any time soon. That joy seems universal despite what some overwrought intellectuals on DCUM may think.

I read Hillbilly Elegy and although I liked it, I thought the author was desperate to interpret every single thing in his life as directly stemming from his class and Appalachian roots when most of it was just plain standard-issue life. (His grandmother threatening a toy store clerk after he commented that her kid shouldn't be playing with a toy in the store -- now THAT probably had a lot to do with his background. Overspending to please kids at Christmas? Seems about right for a lot of people.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So PP seems to say rich kids are such spoiled brats they don’t consider receiving expensive items anything special. And that’s why fewer gifts. I would never aspire to that.

Wait til your kids to go college. Our daughters wanted Barbour jackets. They are 400 dollars. In our house that is your only Xmas gift. I guess really rich people just pick one up while out shopping and then brag about not spending money at xmas.