My wife and I went on our annual trip to the God of Wealth (Ebisuten) shrine in Osaka to make our personal finance prayers for the year and to buy good luck charms for Nate and I for our business. here are a few photos from the trip:

My wife washing her hands before entering the shrine:

My wife making her money prayers:



The good luck charms for Nate and I

Think back to your childhood and try to remember the toys that you got every year while you were growing up. While you probably can remember one or two over the years, you probably don't remember each one in detail. Now think back to some of the holiday traditions that you and your family had over the years. I'm guessing that these left a much strong impression on you (at least they did for me).

These days it's tough to avoid the continual commercialization of the winter holidays and the expenses that go with it. Although all the toy manufacturer's will spend millions of dollars trying to convince you that their latest gizmo is what the holidays are all about, when you sit back and think critically about what you (and your family) want, your common sense should tell you that it isn't the toys. One of the cruelest advertising come-ons that gets blasted throughout December is that without this or that hot toy under the tree, your children will have a disappointing holiday.

The fact is that money has little to do with creating a meaningful and unforgettable holiday season. For children, it is not the toys under the tree near as much as the entire process that is important in the long run. While children will tend to focus on the here and now, it's the traditions that you create that are done year in and year out that will have the lasting impression. It is to your benefit not to get caught up on this particular year, but create your holiday with a long term focus.

When you allow this year's TV commercials to dictate what your holiday is supposed to be, you can be assured that it will mean an unfullfilling and expensive holiday season. If you take the steps to decide what you want the holidays to be and what you want your children to get from them beyond the gifts, however, then you'll find that they actually will cost very little.

Before anything else, you need to sit down and take a critical look at what you want the holidays to mean to you and your family. Up to this point, you have probably let the TV and commercials become your default image. You won't be able to head in another direction until you know what you'd like them to mean for you, your spouse and your children.

One of the easiest actions you can take to make the winter holidays more meaningful is to create traditions. All it takes is a little imagination and you can create as many traditions as you want. It's these traditions that you and your family will fondly look back upon in later years. The best part is these traditions can be incorporated into every aspect of the holiday season from preparation to packing everything away. Here are a few simple ideas to get you started:

Decorating Traditions: Decorating can easily be made into a family traditional event. Choose a day for the family to go on a hike in the woods. As you go on your newly created traditional walk, make it a point to gather all the wonderful natural decorations that you find: brightly colored leaves, pine cones and branches, nuts, mistletoe, holly, berries, etc. Once you return home, spend another day turning all your natural found treasures into your holiday decorations by adding sparkles, ribbons and cotton balls (snow).

Get out paper, crayons, scissors, glue and let the kids make holiday decorations. For older kids, go to the local library and check out a book on making intricate snowflake patterns or origami for them to make decorations. Let the family create the holiday decor.

Make decorating the Christmas tree a traditional family event. Start with making a tradition of getting a tree. This may be going to the mountains to cut your own or to a local lot. We started a tradition a few years ago to buy our Christmas tree at a local nursery (while it isn't a "traditional" pine each year, the tree ends up in our garden when the holiday season is over and the planting of the tree is part of the holidays) Decide as a family the type of tree you want to find and make a tradition of hunting until you find the perfect tree.

Once set up, make a tradition in decorating the tree. Whip up a big bowl of popcorn and let the kids make popcorn strings to hang over the branches (and fill their tummies). Have everyone create a new ornament for each year with each person placing their ornaments from this year and past years on the tree in turns. Turn out all the lights in the room and have a countdown before switching on the Christmas tree lights.

Cooking Traditions: There are a lot of traditions you can create with cooking that will be great memories and take some of the cooking load off of you. Make baking cookies for Santa a children's tradition without (or the appropriate amount depending on their age) adult help. Have the kids in charge of popping the popcorn for decorating the family tree. As one of the children's gifts, let them choose a special dish to eat on Christmas morning. The more you include your children in the preparation of holiday meals and snacks, the more involved they will be with the entire seasonal spirit.

Gift Traditions: While this is the area that worries parents the most due to the costs, starting gift traditions can be a low cost way to exchange memories that will last a lifetime. By doing so you can change the focus of the Christmas morning away from store bought presents to the yearly traditional gifts.

Have each person make their yearly memory album for all the other members of the family. Focus it as the crowning point of each Christmas by exchanging the albums last and discussing the memories from the past year together. Make one of your traditional gifts a letter to your children telling them how much you love them (a gift that can never be given often enough) and what you learned from them in the past year. These are gifts that they will treasured long after all the store bought toys have been broken, lost and forgotten.

Help your children create time capsules. Have them make several each year for different periods in the future for themselves and write the date on the outside of when they want to open them. Then in future years they have already made gifts that they created for themselves and will easily become the centerpiece of opening gifts. You'll be amazed at the happiness they will bring to even the moodiest teenager when they look back at what they wanted to give themselves when they were young.

Make giving away old toys part of the holiday tradition so that it isn't focused solely on receiving. Make the entire process a tradition from choosing the items, wrapping them and taking them down to give to the toy drive together. Not only will it help clear out their rooms of no longer needed items, it will teach them the joy of giving.

General Traditions: There are an abundance of general tradition you can create for this time of year. Pick a favorite holiday book. An hour before bed, turn down the lights, build a fire in the fireplace and light candles. Read a chapter of the book and watch as the kids anticipate the story each night as they become more drawn into it.

Make a tradition one evening to load everyone into the car and drive around and look at all the holiday lights on display in your town. Discuss what you like and don't like. You can even take it a step further and rate the houses. The next day, have your kids go the the house they liked best and give the owners a homemade award for being the best decorated house. Not only is it fun to discuss what each family member likes best, it also will be greatly appreciated by the people who spent a lot of time decorating their homes for the season.

Instead of defaulting to whatever is on TV, have family nights to watch holiday movies. This allows you to set up a viewing program that will teach the wonders of the holidays instead of its commercialism. Have the kids make the snacks for the movies, turn down the lights and take in the true spirit.

These are just a few ideas of possible tradition you might want to begin, but far from all the possibilities out there. The best way to get your creative juices flowing in starting these traditions is to think back to your childhood and what you remember most about the holidays. That is the perfect launching point for creating your own traditions and a good bet is that memories are not about the toys you received.

I've started to think about holiday gifts and one of my all time favorite ones to give is a 64 set of Crayola Crayons. I think they are the greatest gift to give because no matter how old someone is, they will bring a smile to the person's face. Of course, kids love them, but I also give them as gifts to adults (of course, the adult has to have a certain personality to appreciate them and not think you're absolutely nuts, but those who do will treasure them years later as one of their favorite Christmas gifts). There is just something about a box of them that brings a bit of joy upon seeing the box.

I think that they inspire imagination and that is what brings the joy no matter the age. It's that inspiration that I look for when I choose all my holiday gifts and what I find is that gifts that inspire often cost very little...

While my counterparts will be

spending well over $100 and deciding between candy, an evening out with their significant other, flowers, jewelry and gift cards (gift cards???? - even I know that is a sure to pour cold ice on a romantic evening - "here honey, a gift card just for you because I love you so much" - if you're a man and you were considering the gift card, time to step back and think again). Anyway, it doesn't matter because I don't have to do any of it!



I have no doubt that whoever brought St. Valentine's Day to Japan must have been a man. There's no way it could be any other way - the Japanese Valentine's Day is a dream come true for men. That's because there is nothing for men to do on Valentine's Day in Japan. Yep, you read that correctly! Men do absolutely nothing. It's the women that bring chocolate, candy, etc to the men. Speaking from a man's point of view, this is pretty darn hard to beat.

Now men don't get off completely free in all of this. I'm sure that Japanese women soon figured out that this whole deal was a bit backward compared to the rest of the world, but once it had been established, there was no way the men were going to make the switch. Instead of fighting men tooth and nail on this, women instead made up a new day - called White Day - celebrated a month after Valentine's Day. On White Day men purchase chocolate, candy, etc for women. While men would have preferred to have come out of the entire process without any obligation, they acquiesced on this one point figuring they still came out well ahead in the deal compared to men everywhere else in the world.



Men in Japan quickly realized the advantage of having White day a month after Valentine's Day because it gave them something every man needs - basic guidelines and time to prepare. First, men are only required to give chocolate back to those who actually give them chocolate. Even better, since men get to see the gift given to them first, they have a pretty good idea exactly how much effort they need to put in and what they have to spend on the return gift. This makes the entire Valentine's Day experience a lot more enjoyable (at least for men).

So while the rest of you are trying to decide whether to purchase that heart shaped box of chocolates or the teddy bear on your way home at the drugstore on February 14, I'll be sitting on the couch watching TV with a beer in hand wondering what nice surprise I'll get. Hmmmmm, maybe living in Japan isn't all that bad after all...