Merry Christmas!

Today I will celebrate Christmas with my family. We will be few this year but it is a growing number again. It is interesting to see the influence a couple of small toddlers can have on the unification and celebration of holidays. The Christmas tree was as in normal order frugally dressed. Like life in general the less you put on the less you have to remove. That can be concerning Christmas trees, it can be cloths, it can be weight, it can be work. Some things might be more fun to remove than others.

When I was in the Netherlands, it must have been in January 2004, I once overheard a discussion between a couple. The woman was very angry with the man because he had just thrown out the entire Christmas tree from the balcony to the street below and then added it to the heap of things that should be removed by the garbage truck the day after. Throwing out the Christmas tree as such after the holidays were over was not the problem. The problem with this was that they guy had left everything in it that he found too annoying to remove before throwing it out. So the Christmas lights were still in, the glitter things were still in, in principle anything that he could not remove in one go he had left still in when he tossed it out.

She, on the other hand, wanted to re-use it all for the next year and he obviously found it too annoying to spend even five minutes to take the things out before throwing out the entire Christmas tree. His argument was that it is so cheap to buy new things. Yes, it is indeed true. Many things today are simply too cheap and we as humans have to try to control ourselves to make sure that we save things, to make sure that we do not waste things just because it is cheap, that we try to buy better quality that guarantees that the product will last longer etc.

I am sure that the guy will never ever become financially independent with that attitude. The woman seemed to have had a more frugal approach to life but I doubt that will help her in the long run if she stayed together with this guy. Sometimes it would have been interesting to find such people again and to see how their lives are today.

Are they still together? Have they changed their style of living?

So... How do you dress your Christmas tree and what are you doing with it in the end of the holidays?

Merry Christmas to all of you and I wish you and your families all the best today!