About a year ago I saw the one and only Stefanie O’Connell in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and I remembered being completely shocked by these stupid Whos. The only one I had remembered was the little girl – I’d totally forgotten the rest of them weren’t quite as on top of what Christmas means.

Don’t get me wrong, I had no desire to steal their holidays or paint myself green, but talk about overdoing it.

The show opens with Who Likes Christmas? and as these fictional characters went into consumerism overload, personal finance warnings starting going off in my brain. 

Who’s like gifties? Who’s like stocking stuffers? Who’s like pastries? And suckers?

Give us presents, lots of presents?

Yup. Not exactly preaching my favorite message here.

But there’s something about the frenetic energy of the song that really does remind me of the holiday season, when otherwise reasonable folks just lose it.

They more than just lose it, they embrace it. They overspend year after year and struggle through the rest of the winter.

And then they just do it again the next year.

Think about it – would you be better off if a Grinch did steal everything? I mean, is your entire holiday just worshipping consumerism or are you trying to achieve something deeper?

Even if religion isn’t your thing, most people would agree that family and friends and good cheer are at the heart of the holidays. Is all of the shopping pulling you away from that?

Really, what do the holidays mean to you? And do your actions support that?

I know mine don’t sometimes. For pete’s sake, I wrote about bewaring the extra baubles https://brokegirlrich.com/beware-the-baubles/ of Christmas on Wednesday and then spent $30 extra dollars on gifts on Thursday because I found something awesome and hilarious for one of my best friends and then felt like I should pick up something for the other best friend to keep what I spent on them close to even.

I broke two of my own mental rules! BFF #1’s gift was done! And friendship isn’t measured in money, so I shouldn’t’ve worried about matching BFF #2’s gift (cost wise) to BFF #1 – even if I did find something equally awesome to add to what I already had for her.

At the end of the day, the best part of the holidays and my BFF’s is that I get to see them, and for at least that one time a year, the three of us are in a room together and hanging out for a few hours.

The same is true of my family and anyone else I get to see over the holidays. I think an important rule of thumb that I try to hold onto is that if it wouldn’t upset me, why would it upset them? If someone was tight on funds and gave me just a tiny gift or a plate of home baked cookies, would I feel slighted? Not in the least.

If one of the BFF’s gave me only, exactly what I asked for (usually a book), despite the fact that all 3 of us are guilty of the extra add on gifts thing, would that upset me? Not in the least. Honestly, one of the BFF’s is getting married this year and the whole Christmas gift snowball had already started to roll before I realized we probably should’ve offered to just skip it this year so she could save some money.

So this holiday season, I’m trying to harness my inner Cindy Lou Who. How about you?