Have you started thinking about Christmas yet? I’ve already started dreading it. I haven’t quite figured out what I like the least - getting gifts I don’t need or want, or giving gifts that other people don’t need or want.

It might seem early, but now is the time to start thinking about how you want to celebrate Christmas. This will ensure that you have enough time to plan a relaxing season with family and friends, rather than a season of conspicuous consumption.

Here are some tips for fitting your own ethical sensibilities into an over-commercialized season:

1. Make your home a no-giving zone. Start early - it’s no good telling Aunt Jeannie that you don’t plan to exchange gifts when that lumpy green sweater is already in the mail. Similarly, if you plan to spend the holidays with someone, you want to set up the gift-giving rules early. Last year in my home my husband’s parents and my mother agreed that they would not exchange gifts. If you send out a family newsletter each year, you may want to send it earlier and include the announcement that due to (financial situation, awareness of poverty in the world, disgust with consumerism, etc) you are refraining from gift giving this year, and that likewise, you don’t wish to receive any gifts in return. I find that most adults are relieved to find out that they don’t have to purchase Yet Another Gift, not dismayed.

2. Give to charity, not to each other. This is another way to harness the family newsletter—use it to announce that instead of giving individual gifts this year, you have used the money to buy a herd of goats for a third-world country. Heifer.org and the International Fund for Animal Welfare are just two charities that allow you to “itemize” your charitable gift according to what benefits it buys (i.e. $50 buys a neuter for a dog). This is good idea if you’re worried about keeping up appearances by giving a certain amount—I doubt the recipient will go online to price a herd of goats.

3. Suggest a regift swap. I successfully implemented this idea in my book club last year. In this kind of swap everyone contributes a perfectly good item that they don’t need. You can distribute the gifts via any method that works for you: secret Santa, grab bag, Yankee swap. I daresay our book club had more fun with this than we ever would with a new gift swap, perhaps because the nature of the gifts meant that nobody minded so much having a copy of Scattergories or a set of garden gnomes stolen from them, Yankee-swap style.

4. Start a gift-free tradition. Sometime in the week before Christmas, we like to have some friends over for a party. We make it clear that the purpose is not to exchange gifts. We pop popcorn and string them on strings with cranberries and make orange pomanders, listen to Christmas music, and eat Christmas cookies (everybody brings their own). The point is to enjoy each other’s company without an outpouring of consumerism.

5. Decorate green, decorate cheap. There are so many inexpensive ways to decorate in Christmas that don’t involve the consumption of a tree. My fondest Christmas memory is of a day in winter when I was very small and my mother stayed home with me to do Christmas crafts. We made garlands out of old wrapping paper, found pine branches from the woods and set them in jars, and made orange pomanders. Some other Christmas crafts you might want to try are:

6. If you have to give, give consumables. Everybody loves chocolate, wine, or other luxury foods. Other items that will be used, such as soap, lotion - or, hey, CFL bulbs - are alternatives to gifts that will sit on a shelf.

7. Make and give homemade. The beauty of homemade gifts is that they usually cost less than store-bought gifts while providing recipients with a one-of-a-kind, homemade item. Last year, many people on our Christmas list received homebrew beer for exactly this reason. Our spiced Belgian-style ale was quite popular in a cold winter!

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