The greenest gift....

Here it is again. The season of goodwill rent-seeking behaviour by businesses of all stripe. I get that they need to turn a profit by selling things, but I certainly don't understand why each holiday season we need to see more than the last. It seems a unthinking acceptance of the growth model which sees the economy able to expand indefinitely (wow, infinite resources, who would have thought!).
I understand why conventional businesses might be big on this, but I find it tiring to go to some of my favourite green blog sites and find them overrun with 'Ten top green gifts for Christmas' articles, or other such nonsense.
Let's be real about this for a moment. The greenest gift of all is probably no gift at all. Very few citizens of OECD countries, even the poor, really need anything, except possible a fairer distribution of resources within our own countries, or beyond. Even most poor households have TVs, music systems, fridges, flushing toilets, and other accessories of a good life, by global standards.
So what can we do about all this? It is a tough issue for most people. We are caught in webs of relationships with family and friends where gift-giving is the norm. So we end up buying stuff that we know we shouldn't buy, for people who don't need it.
If you can't hang tough with the 'no gift at all' strategy, their are some lower-impact, more carbon-positive alternatives. How about up-cycling something (transforming something that would otherwise be junk into something more useful, with the sweat of your brow)? Perhaps you could donate some of your time, giving a gift of your assistance working in their garden, giving them a massage, or helping them get their old bike into road-ready condition? Perhaps you could simply throw a bit of a party for your nearest and dearest (hopefully without over-eating involved) that can stand in lieu of present-giving this year? Or the simplest (yet hardest) of all, tell people that you cannot ethically give any gifts this year, and would happily not receive anything either.
For my part I am mostly taking my own advice, though I tend to weaken when it comes to small people, figuring they still get some joy out of gift-receiving, and in a broader sense, child labour laws prevent them from working themselves to buy stuff, so perhaps it is a bit of income-redistribution on the side.
I'd love to hear from people, post-holiday season, how they found this year's blend of compromise, and conformity went for them...