Happy Holidays everyone, no matter what you celebrate! We celebrated Christmas today with my cousins in London, and I wanted to share a new tradition we started: games instead of presents.

I love a gift as much as the next person, and I am not hating on gifts at all. The reason we chose to do no gifts this year is that last year, we all ended up buying each other the same things – pens, pencils, socks… from the same shop. We all went to a “gift shop” and bought things we felt like we had to buy.

I love gift giving when I find a brilliant gift and think YES! I know someone who would absolutely love this. It’s not their birthday or a holiday, but it doesn’t matter, I’ll give it to them anyway. But I don’t like obligatory gift-giving. I find it stressful, unnecessary and wasteful to consume things just for the sake of it.

So this year, instead of giving gifts, we all played games as our gifts to each other. We did Charades, Celebrity Heads Up, and our new tradition: Secret Santa Portraits. Everyone picks a name from a hat, and then you have to paint that person. Then we mix all the paintings up, and each person has to guess who painted them. Do you like the one my cousin painted of me? 😂

Now we’re all snuggled up together on the couch watching Lord of the Rings (again).

No one even mentioned presents, and no one felt left out. We had the most brilliant time, eating and playing games, without the pressure.

Happy Holidays, everyone!