Personal Post: Poverty and Holidays 10.10.2026 (Patreon)

This is a Personal Post. No game content, no industry insights, no (intentional) humor. Just stuff I used to put on Social Media. I encourage everyone who wants to read my personal thoughts to join this Patreon as at least free members. Of course, joining at even the cheapest paid level is a great way to support me and my writing, if that's something you want to do.

I'll make an Index of these eventually.

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When I was quite young, around 5, my father took the entire family with him to California and Nevada as he went on sabbatical. He could either have taken 6 months at full pay, or 12 months at half pay, and he chose the latter. So, my parents were paying for 2 young kids, 3 moves in a year (Oklahoma to Nevada, Nevada to California, California to Oklahoma), and doing it all on half as much money as normal. Budgets were tight.

Now, this was not the kind of poverty that leaves people homeless. In fact, they HAD a house, paid off, back in Oklahoma with firefighters housesitting it. My father HAD a job, and his income was assured to double the next year. This was a calculated hiccup in cash flow, not a disaster. But it did mean that for one year worth of holidays, things were done on the cheap. A single gift for a birthday, with a party only involving the core 4 family. A single gift for Christmas. A small Christmas tree with its only ornamentation being strings of popcorn and dried berries we strung ourselves.

I was 5. My recollection I did not take it well.

My family was otherwise solidly, comfortably middle class. An out-of-state family vacation every other year, and an in-state vacation on off years, and twice the "big" trips (Hawaii in one case, Disney World in the other). And I got used to that. That established my assumed baseline for what life is "supposed" to be like, and the "right" way to celebrate holidays.

In my mid-teens, my father's father died. My sister went off to college, and my parents and grandparents paid for most of it. My father, who had taught lots of short courses (often around the world) to help pay for things, both stopped doing that and began spending much, much more money on binge drinking and weekend trips away so he could pretend he was even richer with hotels, endless booze, and prostitutes.

When I was 18, my parents told me that while my sister's college options were that anywhere she got in the family would figure out how to pay for it, my options were the hometown college or trade school. The family finances were suffering. (And to be clear, my sister got a Master's degree, and I flunked out of two semesters of part-time college in a row, so it's not like I was really missing an opportunity. Flunking out in a more expensive college further away would not have made my life better.)

When I was 20, I got married. My parents got divorced. My father's alcoholism forced him to retire (which he didn't quite technically qualify to do, but he had many friends in his department, and officially he took a sabbatical and then retired, even though everyone knew his sabbatical was BS to get him over the Rule of 80 retirement line). Both my grandmothers were no longer in good enough health to host family dinners on their own.

I blithely began deciding my wife and I should host holiday dinners. I had no clue their cost. The first time we did it, while one of the grandmothers gave us money to cover the cost, I went WILDLY over budget. We were late on the rent that month, and took so long to catch up that we were nearly evicted. I learned that lesson fast, but for years I chafed at budget restrictions to holiday spending. These weren't the holidays from my childhood.

Of COURSE I should have embraced the spirit of the seasons. But I have enough depression issues even without feeling like I am failing my family by not being able to put as big a Thanksgiving feast in front of them, or failing my neighborhood by not being able to decorate the exterior of my house for Christmas.

But at least I could pass out full-sized candy bars for Halloween. Candy bars were cheap, and we never lived anyplace that got more than 20 or so trick-or-treaters. I'd use torn costumes and broken junk to make ghosts and goblins for the exterior of our house, use LARP materials for my own costume, and pass out full-sized candy to kids who came by. Because "fun-sized" candy isn't fun. I got full-sized candy when I was a kid, and I wanted to keep that tradition, at least.

Halloween is my very favorite holiday, and I was still doing IT right.

(Halloween spiders optional. Art by Linnaea Mallette)

Fast forward a few decades.

We now live in a neighborhood where we get 200+ trick-or-treaters. We have been intentionally trying to build a reputation as THE house to come by to get candy. I LOVE passing it out, and seeing a few hundred costumes, and seeing child after child gasp because we have both a huge RANGE of candy options, AND they are full-sized. Last year, we even had granola and water bottles for parents.

But this year?

Thanks to stupid economic choices by the current US administration, this year even when bought in bulk most full-sized candy is more than $1 a piece. Our medical debt is a bigger chunk of our budget. We just got his with a huge additional medical bill out of the blue. We don't HAVE $200 to spend on candy, no matter how much I love Halloween or want to see scores of kids gasp in joy.

As it happens, our particular story for this particular year has a sappy Hallmark ending. One of our friends, who likes to be here to help pass out candy, gave us a candy budget because HE wants to enjoy the looks on kids' faces.

But for millions of people each year, there's a reason they hate the holdiays.