Having a Late Christmas to Save Money

This is a guest post from Michael Caldwell at Use The Dollar.

If you would like to write a guest post for Distilled Rose Personal Finance, simply contact me!

Michael Caldwell is a lifelong entrepreneur who has become active in the Financial world. As he experiments and finds working methods to building wealth, he shares them with others.

For those who celebrate, Christmas is supposed to be a time of family togetherness, outward love and giving.

What it actually becomes for many of us, though, is an impoverishing end to the year.
How can we fix this?

The Problem

Any time that retailers can predict hundreds of millions of people rushing to the stores in unison- I can promise you- That is not the time to go shopping!

Even though everyone knows that it is the very worst season to shop- millions do.

But how can you avoid that? Christmas falls on the same day for everyone. It does it each and every year. But does it have to?

The Solution

Change the Day your family celebrates Christmas!

What if your family celebrated Christmas on the 28th instead of the 25th?
What if you could take advantage of the post-Christmas sales that nearly every retailer offers?!

The day is close enough to the standard Christmas day that you'll be able to take advantage of everyone elses' Christmas parties, keep the sense of the season, etc.

Aren't you losing the meaning of the Season?

For those of you who are concerned about changing the day because you want to preserve the integrity of Christ's birth, you should be celebrating much earlier.
Israeli meteorologists best guess places the real date of Christ's birth on September 29th, 5 B.C.

The Catholic writer Mario Righetti candidly admit that, "to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, the Church of Rome found it convenient to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the birth of Christ to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honor of the 'Invincible Sun' Mithras, the conqueror of darkness" (Manual of Liturgical History, 1955, Vol. 2, P. 67).

So if Christ wasn't born on "Christmas Day", and there's no other real motivating factor to keeping your family's Christmas on the 25th, then there are only two reasons you would celebrate on the 25th:

1. You're a huge fan of keeping to Pagan-Fooling, Roman Tradition


2. You enjoy spending far more money than you need to spend.

If either of those qualifications fit you- Feel free- Go ahead and continue celebrating on December 25th.

If not though- Make the smart decision and move it back a few days. Purchase your gifts during the sales- Save hundreds, if not thousands- and have a Merry Christmas!!!!