Starving artist tips: Christmas gifts on the cheap

Let’s face it: the celebration of Christmas (and, to be fair, Chanukah and Kwanzaa, too) has become reminiscent of a Dionysian orgy in its consumerist indulgence. Flashing lights out the wazoo. Thousand-dollar baubles. Glistening, sugar-coated sweetbreads. Fisticuffs in the Wal-Mart checkout line. Piles and piles and piles of presents beneath the tree.

People, we cannot afford to celebrate Christmas this way in a recession like the one we’re experiencing. The unemployment rate is 11 percent. Underemployment: 17.5 percent. We need to scale it back.

To this end, I dreamed up 10 creative, inexpensive Christmas gifts and tips to save you money in the gift-giving process. Some of them, you will find, are not for everyone, so feel free to tweak these ideas to meet the needs of your giftees:

This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.