A Totally FREE Christmas 2025

Dizzycap

I thought it might be interesting and worth while to create a new thread:

A Totally Free Christmas 2025

A totally FREE Christmas involves some gifting sacrifice, recycling & upcycling the old, online cashback sites, and saving up supermarket loyalty points etc from different Supermarkets using phone Apps. Feel free to make suggestions and share ideas to make a magical FREE Christmas for ALL xxxx

1) Christmas Gifts

I always receive not needed / inappropriate gifts. It's not that I'm ungrateful in the least, far from it, but what's the use of buying someone expensive bath bombs and salts when they are unable to physically use a bath? Or gifting an asthmatic perfume or scented candles? As I don't like to offend, I gift swap between friends and even relatives.
A) I place all unusable gifts in a box with a written list of who gifted me what & any medical issues they may have. I then Christmas & often birthday gift from my stash whilst obviously making sure that I don't gift what was gifted to me from a particular individual or gift something inappropriate (this is where the written list is invaluable!) - I've done this for the past 5 years, saving £'s by not buying gifts.
I always keep gift bags to recycle with gift swaps but other possibilities include keeping and storing left over wrapping paper, recycling wrapping paper from gifts received, wallpaper, material, and even recyclable plastic adding some homemade decorations on, if needed:-)
C) For friends or relatives who prefer to receive a Gift Card for a particular shop, there is a workaround to receiving these free. Some online cashback sites offer cashback on your online purchases from goods & insurance to successful bank account switches and credit card applications which can be exchanged for e-vouchers. A typical example would be, TopCashBack - Confirmed cashback can be placed into your e-wallet which attracts an additional swap bonus when requesting an e-voucher from a particular retailer - retailer bonus amounts vary but are always visible on the retailers displayed in your TopCashBack e-wallet. Once received, the e-voucher can then be sent to someone via text, email or even written / printed in a Christmas card for them to use online.
D) Alternatively, if you're short of physical gift swaps, you can repeat C) redeeming the e-voucher(s) online yourself and have a gift sent to someone. A typical example would be Amazon. Load the e-voucher(s) into your Amz account and buy & send when it becomes totally free - job done!
E) Evaluate whether buying gifts is longer an essential - We all know times are difficult and unfortunately, many are struggling financially. Do you really need to tit-for-tat with a gift budget or collective gift budget? How about making a gift for someone from items you already have or will have using your accumulated SM loyalty points; mince pies, a Christmas cake or could forage for; make a Christmas wreath, or an item they have that you could easily mend / fix or spruce up for them with skills, tools & supplies you already have? It's certainly food for thought and is so very simplistic in a heavily dominated commercialised world.
Cost for Christmas Gifts £0

2) Christmas Cards & Tags

I always recycle my Christmas cards and I only hand deliver to neighbours / friends or send a maximum of 4 cards in the post to relatives - I don't pay for stamps as a dear friend of mine always gives me a book of 8 stamps as a gift - I requested this a couple of years ago as they realised after a chat that stamps were a beneficial gift for me.
A) I carefully cut off the front of cards and the inside verse and then recycling them into new. For this, you will need to acquire some fresh or useable A4 card, paper & glue from somewhere. You can often find FREE giveaways on free sites and facebook.
Fold the A4 Card and glue on Christmas fronts & inside verses .
C) Use the A4 paper to make envelopes, if you don't already have any appropriate sized spares laying around.
However, the easier alternative to not recycling / making cards, especially if you have to send several or abroad would be to find a FREE card making site online, make and send a FREE card by email. I've used a mixture of methods, much to the pleasure of the recipients, whilst costing me absolutely nothing, except time & effort.
D) Christmas gift tags - The simplistic option is to cut Chrissy shapes out of old Christmas card fronts, write on the blank reverse, and stick on - job done!
Christmas Card & Tags Cost: £0

3) Christmas Decorations

I repair, recycle/upcycle, or make them out of what I have collected or been given FREE and in moderation; I don't keep & store unnecessary items - NO clutter.
A) Make a list of the Christmas decorations you need. Sort through what you already have and work from there. Repair what you need to, if you can, upcycle a decoration you're bored of seeing into something new and/or make new decorations using everyday items such as inner loo & kitchen roll cardboard tubes. You can make a Christmas tree out of cardboard rolls, if you put your mind to it. Even better if you include the kids or grandkids with making things as they have such a wonderful imagination.
Last year I made a 2 small table standing Christmas trees from collected 0.5 inch sticks which I found on my walks. All I needed was time, cutters, and glue - they looked fab!
Christmas wreaths are easy to make. All you need is wire and pliers to make a wreath frame: wire coat hangers also included, and then time to forage around your garden or locally for fresh covering and/or recycle old Chrissy decs onto your handmade wreath frame. The average half decent commercial Christmas wreath will cost you around £45-£50+
Christmas Decorations Cost: £0

4) Christmas Food

A) Make a list of the items you need & then make good use of collecting loyalty points and bonuses from Supermarkets etc for the year.
I will only collect extra loyalty points on the items I need in a shop and am never swayed to spend money on things I don't need just to get extra points, it's not worth it!
I use 3 Supermarket Apps to collect points & extra bonuses /discounts and may shop at 2 different supermarkets, usually on the same day, to maximize point collections, but not without price checking on the items I need from my prepared shopping list first.
Yearly collected points can be used/swapped to purchase shopping and goods, but the timing to use them to pay for Christmas food, is key.
For example:
Sainsburys in 2023 had a double up promotion where if you had more than £20 of points, you could double them by clicking In-App, and putting the points towards Christmas food shopping.
Sainsburys in 2024 had a mid-end of November promotion for quality medium-large meat joints for a 1/3rd of the cost & 50% off what the Christmas price was. They also ran several promotions over the 2 weeks which could have netted you virtually everything you needed food wise for Christmas before December, and better still, all paid for with your year collected points.
**Don't forget the Christmas week when Supermarkets run the 8-10p fresh veg packs - These can also be paid for using your collected points.
C) Lidl App gives out an In-App scratch card / prize wheel spin after every shop. You can buy 1 item and receive a FREE In-App scratch card or wheel spin which either gives a free item or a product discount. In September the Lidl In-App Super Scratch Cards usually appear. Prizes range from a £10 shopping voucher to snack based wins: large packs of crips, tubs of mini-cheddars, bars of chocolate etc - collect all your FREE non-fresh treat wins and store in a box ready for Christmas - snacks and nibbles sorted.
Christmas Food Cost including treats: £0

5) Pre & Christmas Entertainment

A) Check locally for FREE events from Christmas Carol Services, switching the Christmas Lights on, a visiting Santa on a sleigh giving out small free gifts, local Library events etc which are great for the kids and best of all, it'll cost you nothing but a little time and effort. There are also a number of free adult events like concerts, Christmas quiz & bingo nights, which won't cost you a penny, if you can sniff them out!
** Don't forget that some pubs also have Apps available which can give you a free drink or 2, not just on your birthday, but also at Christmas, and even a free meal - yummy!
Switch off your mobile phone & TV and have fun with simple games like charades, eye-spy with my little eye, something I must declutter in the New Year beginning with... etc
Christmas Entertainment: £0

6) Christmas Clothes & Feel a Million Dollars Dress-up & Pamper Advent Calendar

A) Go clothes & shoe shopping throughout December in your own wardrobe - mix and match until you come up with something magical. It's all there, you've just got to put it together. And there's always something you forgot you had, which is even better!
Shop for jewellery in your jewellery box & put on some glitz every day in December, even if you dress up to go and empty the rubbish bin, do it & feel a million dollars!
Don't forget the shoes / boots and all the other accessories you have hidden in your clutter somewhere!
C) Pamper yourself by using up all those pamper goodies that you've not used, forgotten about, are part used or make a pamper advent calendar and put something in it for every day no matter how small - used or otherwise. Commercial December pamper advent calendars can set you back anything from £75+ upwards.
December Clothes, Shoes, Accessories & Pamper Shopping: £0

Willowtree222

What an amazing thing this is and some great ideas here to keep costs low.
Thank you x

Dizzycap

@ You're very welcome I hope others find this thread beneficial too!

Yoshimi2025

Love this thread! Last year’s Olio collection on Christmas Eve was full of goodies, you can pretty much do Christmas & Boxing Day from it. 

I collect points from Boots recycling so making up a Christmas hamper for my grandaughters is free, I use the points when the Christmas stuff goes on sale in late January and stash it away. Making crackers is always fun, the little ones love it and they put jokey things in a couple like a sprout or a dare written on paper. 

Love a cost effective Christmas 🎄 

oceanspirit

We use vouchers collected during the year from our credit cards for our December SM shop.  Any spare are given as gifts.

OH’s late family always made their own crackers and we have carried on the tradition.  We just use the inner from a kitchen roll, some previously used wrapping paper that is no longer usable for a gift and some ribbon (the short lengths that hold the tags on new clothes). Instead of the usual type of cracker gift we put in a chocolate as we don’t eat lots of chocs otherwise so it feels like a treat and we shout ‘bang’ when we pull them.  We have used the same hats for several years in a row.

We have our own tradition of carefully opening gifts (just one end and sliding the gift out) from other people and the next year finding gifts for each other to fit into paper that is already still in the shape of the previous gift.  We have some that have been reused many times over.  Our friends are more than happy to have home made gift tags from previous year’s cards and reused paper too (we save the best bits for this).

Decorations-wise, we use a selection of what we have already, all things that mean something to us and use different combinations each year - we live in a very small place so we don’t put many up.

Dizzycap

Great additions @ Yoshimi2025 & @ oceanspirit

Points collected on anything you use regularly are always a bonus and can so easily be mixed and matched as you go along.

I personally find Christmas exceedingly stressful as some people seem to change for the worst with their general attitude. For that reason, I prepare for Christmas on and off throughout the year up until the end of August.

I send 2 Christmas gifts within the UK, parcel post on September 1st to avoid the November & December post service craziness and I then know all I have left to do is get the plastic box out marked 'Chrissy', in December. Meanwhile, anything I get gifted which is really not needed gets put in a second box ready to re-gifted when needed  - that's birthday gifts done and dusted @ £0 cost

I've already completed my Christmas gift swap with everything, bagged, wrapped, tagged and with handmade Christmas cards thrown in. Everything is stored in a 'chrissy' marked platic storage box which is under the bed ready to see daylight in Decemeber - Job done! £0

Happily collecting SM points via APP and other store points via APP as and when I really need to shop, which these days is predominantly food shopping. I sometimes hold out and wait for a double points and/or 50% off In-App Voucher promotion to appear before I then go and bulk shop on HH essentials as well as food items to batch cook and make meals to full up the freezer Love those great discounts and extra points

I do also make my own Chrissy crackers using Kitchen roll tubes and left over wrapping papper etc. I'll make them up using what I have available and I always save the gifts from inside previous years crackers to use in the next years. I've even been known to save the paper hats

QueenJess

I love this thread

I also upcycle all my xmas cards by removing the written on part and sticking them to new card.  Sadly we get a lot of gifts for the kids which are wrapped in paper (I'd prefer reusable gift bags, but I cannot control other people and particularly my parents ).  Lots of those were that shiny paper you can't recycle as well.  So after Xmas I tediously trimmed and saved all the paper I could for reuse, then the offcuts I turned into Xmas cards and gift tags.

For the xmas cards I cut out squares from cereal packets and covered them with the different wrapping paper, then stuck three (2 large and one small) haphazardly on top of each other to look like presents.  I then used a stamper for a xmas message on the inside.  I made 70 cards and very little waste.  For the gift tags, I used a gift card punch I got as a present a few years ago.  Just need to be able to use them all up now!

So now I have free gift cards and xmas cards sorted with £0 expense to myself as I already had card blanks in.

For Xmas presents I keep an eye out on my Buy Nothing group as they often have decent things. I collect over a few months for the kids and so my cost is generally very low.  Often people declutter the few months before.

Edit: I also got a full size xmas tree (7.5 feet) with a storage box and complete with all lovely decorations for free from Buy Nothing in December.  The nice lady even helped me to the car with it!  As it's a fake one, that's me set for free for the rest of my life!  Loads of people giving xmas trees and decorations away in December on my Buy Nothing site.  One year I just made paper chains with DS from paper we had lying around.

Dizzycap

@ QueenJess - Fab idea with the cereal boxes & crissy cards - 70 cards I've made in bulk before but never 70

I've got stampers too but my inks are just about finished, but I could use acrylic paint and try stamping when the paints part dry? Will have to experiment

I've had a look on Buy Nothing for my local area with a 25 miles radious and there's virtually nothing listed. Those things that have been, are over 2 years old I will however, keep a look out, not that I actually need anything, but someone else might

I'm ashamed to say that I've spend the past 2 years decluttering Christmas tees, decs and lights. How I ended up with so many was due to them being given to me and I just thought, 'I'll put it in the shed until December' - FATAL! There was so much junk in there that I couldn't see all the mounds of Chrissy stuff, so twice last Summer I attacked the shed, much to my absolute horror - I could have been selected for the TV programme, 'Hoarders'.  I decluttered five 7' fake Chrissy trees, baubles of all sizes, lights, tinsel ,6 x standing Santa's and boxes of pine cones which I'd collected on babyface forest walks to people who really needed these things for last Chrissy at a time when money was exceedingly tight for them, so off they went to clutter up new homes leaving me with a lovely clean uncluttered shed

I did make 2 table standing wooden triangle trees out of sticks/branches I'd collected on babyface forest walks which I enjoyed far more than the usual large 7' fakes -these are the only trees I have now, thank goodness. Plus, very little decs just a few small baubles and a star for the tops which I made out of gold foil that I already had, and 4 sets of mini lights.  So for me, at the beginning of March 2025, Christmas is already sorted with pressies, cards, and decs all for £0, leaving just the food; so shopping points, points and more points but only for the items I need to buy and when I finally need to have a stock up during the month! Plus, the Lidl FREE In-App super wheels and scratch cards in September onwards for FREE Chrissy treats

QueenJess

@Dizzycap I don’t really send many cards, but the kids insist on sending them to their whole class! I was determined to cover them all using stuff that would otherwise be thrown away!

Buy Nothing seems very binary. My parents one is also dire. I seem to be in an area where a few people have given good things and then it spirals. It helps I live in a wealthy area as well. There’s 2,000 in my group now!

Dizzycap

@ QueenJess - me neither with the card sending. I will only be sending 3 by post this year to really close long term friends. Unfortunately, one very sadly passed away 2 days before Christmas just gone, which I still can't get my head around, the rest will be hand delivered or a free e-card will be arriving by inbox

Dizzycap

Something else which is totally unrelated to Christmas but very useful. Some local Libraries have started School Uniform collection & exchange stations where uniform that's been outgrown, even new items, including shoes are placed in collection baskets and parents can pop in and exchange or just take the things they need for a child / children free of charge - No questions asked.

It's well worth looking out for or even just enquiring as to whether the scheme is available in your local area

Every little helps xxx