Buy less, donate more — how American families can increase charitable giving during the holiday season

It all had the makings of a classic Christmas crisis: Neal Gorenflo was in his mid-40s living in Northern California, building his start-up nonprofit organization, and he was overworked, stressed out and fed up with the materialism – and massive expense– of the holiday season. 

He wanted to explode in frustration, he said. 

At the same time, he was getting more "civically involved in his community" and he started thinking about how this time of the year could be more of an opportunity for families to think about how to give back.