What do you give at Christmas?

Today I finally finished my quilted bed runner for my Grandma for Christmas this year! It's always nice to finish a project and know that sometime soon they will be given to someone who will appreciate them. On a more personal note, I feel a huge sense of achievement because I made this exact same quilt for my mum last year and it took me months to do, whereas this took me 3 Saturday afternoons of work. I'm really pleased, and it's nice to have a marker as to how much I'm learning from all this. Anyway, here's the finished article...

I read another blog this week about Christmas and the awful commercial side of it. It made a lot of good points - people should see it as an opportunity for spending quality time with family and friends, for enjoy simple pleasures and putting your feet up, for enjoying the atmosphere and being comfortable without going completely over the top. I agree, totally. It should be all those things. 
It shouldn't be all about the completely over-the-top indulgent side - apart from anything, times are hard and we should be more careful about how we spend. Christmas shouldn't be an excuse to ignore this fact!!

Every single year I regret how much I over indulge with food and drink, but it's difficult when it's EVERYWHERE and unspoken pressure to just pack it away, even if you're not hungry! 
Some years ago I began to reject the need to buy all that beautiful wrapping paper, ribbon and boxes and tried to find other ways of presenting my gifts to my family - one year everyone got newspaper with graffiti on the pictures, and they loved it! It all still ends up in the bin! 
Charity donations are good for those family members who tell you each year "I don't want anything, don't worry about wasting your money!" My Granddad got a card from me one year from the Hospice of St Francis in Hertfordshire to say that money had been donated in his name towards the cost of new equipment for their patients. I think he appreciated it, especially as my Nan died of cancer in 2006.
I must admit though that I love the sights, sounds, smells and 'feel' that Christmas time brings, and people are effected by those things in different ways. The best thing is how giving it makes people; whilst tin shaking for the Samaritans last year, I was handed a £50 note from a member of the public who then told me they had no family to spend it on otherwise and hoped that it would help the charity to continue to be at the end of the phone for people on their own at Christmas, because having someone there to talk to is so precious.
Homemade gifts is another way of making myself feel like I've given something meaningful but that will also allow me to learn a skill and amuse myself whilst making it. I don't see anything wrong with that.

How do you guys stop yourselves from over spending at Christmas? Do you have ways of giving without losing your senses?

BB xxx