I remember back when we were very young there were 4 kids in our family and no income all I got for Christmas was a little blue purse and $1.00 we had lights and ropeing for the tree but little else my mother got very creative and saved toliet paper cardboard wrapped it in foil and we tied curling ribbon on and hung on the tree.  We did not have stocking to hang but used those little coffee cans for our fruit and candy even though I have had Christmas with many more material things I still look back and think the poorest one was one of the best.

Oh wow I remeber when I lived in england back in 69 we were poor but mom gave us kids a plate of small fruit and chocolet dad gave mom house shoes and dad a pair of socks that was the best christmas ever because oma and opa was there with us...Oma meaning grand mother and opa meaning grand father in german..

Cindy

I don't remember a Christmas as being bare when I was a kid, but we were always poor, so it probably didn't make an impression on me. The barest Christmas that I remember was when I was a young adult and without a job. Things were really bad and I had to move back in with Mom and Dad. I had very little money and so made all of the Christmas gifts I gave that year. As I was the oldest of 8 kids, there were a lot of gifts to come up with. I made a pencil sketch of my brother who had been killed in Viet Nam the year before and spent a little on a picture frame and that was Mom and Dad's gift. I remember that Mom cried when she opened it. I knitted one of my brothers a pair of red and green slippers because that's what he wanted. I don't remember the rest, but it was the best Christmas ever. I learned to give of myself and not of my money. 

Oh dear!  I read this wrong the first time out!

The barest Christmas I remember was the first one after Momma and Daddy divorced.

Momma gave me and my brother a kitten that she got from a co-worker.  Momma HATES cats, but knew that weI needed something like that and we couldn't have a dog in our apt.

Momma re-made one of her dresses to fit me. She also made me a cape to wear in the house out of a towel and some rick-rack that she found on sale in place of a robe.  My stocking had 1 pr of socks and a book.  Brother got house slippers also made from the towel, pajamas made from a flannel blanket someone gave her (I sewed on the buttons picked out of the button jar!).  His stocking had 3 pr of socks and a GI Joe that a neighbor gave her to give to him.

Our Christmas breakfast was scrambled eggs with weinies and toast and strawberry jam.  Also hot chocolate.  Years later she told me that she stole the eggs from the nursing home she worked at, the jam was a gift from a patients' family and she borrowed the milk and cocoa powder from the neighbor who gave us the GI Joe.

re-tired

 The year I was sixteen. We couldn't even afford a tree. My mom cut a roll of last years wrapping paper in the shape of a tree and thumb tacked it to the wall. She strung lights across the tacks. I had a job at the time and was the only one to purchase presents for the entire family, so I didn't get anything. We didn't have any meat so we made biscuts and five different kinds of veggies.

cyn

My senior year of high school my dad was laid off from NASA.  They called it a furlough.  This was Christmas 95; the gov't couldn't seem to come together to balance the budget and so a lot of employees were temporarily laid off.  Sometimes they had to come in and work, but would not get a paycheck.  I think it lasted 4 or 5 months.  My mom had left her office manager position to build the home business, but she went back to work part-time (30+ hours/week -- taking extra shifts whenever possible) at a fast food place.  I had worked all summer at a theme park and had saved quite a bit of money.  The credit union was very understanding and allowed people to pay interest only on their mortgages; still we were b-r-o-k-e.  My mom had to use all the money from my savings account and the home based business took any job people called with.

That Christmas my mom didn't want things to change a lot for me, but we had less money than ever, so I know they spent probably $50 making sure I had a couple nice things under the tree.  I know my dad got two small gifts and my mom got a couple of small things, too.  I know I got a movie on DVD as one of my gifts, b/c we all sat in our pjs and ate breakfast (my mom's sausage and cheese balls -- best things ever!!!!!!!) and watched my new movie.  Whenever I think about the spirit of Christmas and the holiday season, that's the Christmas I remember most fondly.

We had quite a few bare Christmases when I was growing up - the family business was a major drain on our finances, but my dad refused to give it up! 

There were a few Christmases when we didn't receive any gifts from our parents!  I was quite young  and I honestly didn't think it was odd that we didn't have gifts under the tree from Mom and Dad - it didn't dawn on me for a long time that kids actually got gifts from their own parents!

We got so many gifts (nothing elaborate - books, puzzles) from our 10 aunts and uncles and other relatives that under the tree never actually looked bare.   Now the tree itself - that was a different story!   We had one of those silver tinsel numbers for years, and continued to use it long past its "useful" life.  It became very sparse, but we decorated it with much pomp and pageantry every year. After a while, even I couldn't ignore how bad it was.  My dad used to tell us stories of how in the old days, people used to make their trees with rope and wire! Without complaining about our sorry tree (that would have been an instant punishment!)  I tried to talk my dad into a daddy-and-me rope tree project, to no avail!  A friend living overseas bought us a nice artificial tree at a Boxing Day sale and shipped it home for us.  We used the same hodge podge of decorations, year after year - no one expected their tree to look the ones in the magazines, nor did they have to have a new look every Christmas, either!

When things improved a little a few years later, our parents would give us each a sum of money and take us so that we could shop for our own gifts. That was so much fun!  I used to buy myself one big thing and lots of little things.  My idea of a big thing was a craft kit; it certainly was NOT the latest techno-gadget! When I became a teenager, I'd buy myself new jeans (we wore uniforms to school, so jeans were strictly going-out clothes)

Every Christmas Mom made us new clothes - she worked with a fabric importer, and she also received lots of remnants from a relative that was a seamstress, and borrowed a sewing machine from yet another relative.  I don't know how she did it but she made odds and ends look like designer stuff!  Our Christmas outfits always drew compliments and I loved to show off about the gorgeous clothes my mom made!

The highlight of our Christmases was the family get-together with the 14 cousins, their parents, my grandparents!  Lots of good clean fun - don't remember who got what cool gift (except for one cousin's Six Million Dollar man Sneakers - I was quite envious; I was Lee Majors/ Steve Austin's biggest fan).  But I do remember the fun! 

DH and I have had some bare Christmases too - but we tried our best to make it great for the kids!  One year, the tree was decorated with tulle (leftover from our wedding), a few strings of white lights (also from our wedding) and stars cut out of gold-foil card scrap that came from BIL's work place, a printery!  Funny though, visitors to our home loved that tree.  One relative asked me to duplicate it in her store!  

It's funny - the barest Christmases were actually the best Christmases!

Edited to add:

One of the Christmas highlight was the case of soda my dad would buy!  Christmas was the only time soda was bought in our house - it was a treat, not a major food group contrary to my kids' opinions!

It was 1968. Mom and I just moved and her SSN disability checks hadn't caught up to the change of address. (Mom had a habit of moving too much compounding the confusion). One of her friends let us stay in her duplex apt until we got on our feet. We had a small fake tree from someplace but no presents and very little food. I remember this Christmas because I had a classmate, who pretended to be my friend, who lived up the block from us and she would always come over to see if we had any presents for her under the tree. She finally got the hint that she wasn't getting anything but resorted bullying me. It left a lasting impression 40 years later. My mom was irresponsible with money, so hard times were never a real surprise but it was embarrassing because adults would ask odd questions. Looking back I think some of mom's excuses/stories didn't make sense to people and she was always needing a handout. It played a big role in my response to money today.

sunshinetreva:

 This was Christmas 95; the gov't couldn't seem to come together to balance the budget and so a lot of employees were temporarily laid off.  Sometimes they had to come in and work, but would not get a paycheck. 

My cousin works as a nurse @ the VA and was/still is considered an essential employee so she was forced to work every scheduled work day without pay the entire time. Thankfully right before Newt threw his temper tantrum (as dc&I call it) she &I had bought a pig and split it so she had pleanty of pork on hand, also her dh worked outside the goverment (like your mom) and was able to bring in some wages.

A lot of her co-workers weren't so lucky they were completely caught off gaurd by the sudden shut down of the US goverment, had no extra food or other resources on hand and both spouses worked at the VA as essential employees. That just goes to show that no job not even a goverment one is ever 100% secure.

Mine would be the Christmas 1972 when Dad was almost on strike. I say almost cause they walked in June and stayed out till Dec 17th so he was back to work before Christmas but it wasn't till a few days after Christmas that he saw his first paycheck in six months. We'd been managing on Mom's pay check (1/3 of Dad's) and he was selling animals for slaughter to pay the bills but even that wasn't quite enough.

The last day of school before Christmas break the pricipal called db#2 down to his office and gave him a plain brown paper bag that he was instructed not to open until he was home. I was called down at the end of the day (as in I nearly missed my bus end of the day) and he gave me the same brown paper bag and told not to open it till I got home (the principal knew me too well). When we got home and opened the bags db#2 had a complete tonka constuction set and I had a tea set.

The principal was a member of the local Rotary Club and they had done a toy drive for all the families that had been effected by the stirke that year. He had called Mom at work and had her stop on her way home for the rest of the gifts for Christmas morning (2 each for the rest of us). He offered a dinner basket but she turned cause we had just finished with harvest & slaughter so there was more than enough food for a nice Christmas meal.