I admit I am already thinking about Christmas this year. A little concerned about whether my budget this year will allow me to give a repeat performance of the most anticipated part of the kids' Christmas season - opening the gifts (sad, I know!). Usually I buy, buy, buy so that this ceremony will at least last longer than 5 minutes.
Then of course, some of the gifts break the day after Christmas and some never even make it out of the box! (However, I must admit that Santa's Nintendo DS gift is hands-down the MOST UTILIZED gift he has ever brought.)
Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW the true meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of our Savior. So at what point did the hype over the gifts overtake this extraordinary celebration?
Receiving gifts is so exciting at the time, but what about 5 minutes after it’s over, or two days? Or six months? What does it mean then? In searching for a more fulfilling Christmas experience to hopefully overshadow the “gift” part, I just ordered a book called “Unplug the Christmas Machine” by Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli.
Then of course, some of the gifts break the day after Christmas and some never even make it out of the box! (However, I must admit that Santa's Nintendo DS gift is hands-down the MOST UTILIZED gift he has ever brought.)
Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW the true meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of our Savior. So at what point did the hype over the gifts overtake this extraordinary celebration?
Receiving gifts is so exciting at the time, but what about 5 minutes after it’s over, or two days? Or six months? What does it mean then? In searching for a more fulfilling Christmas experience to hopefully overshadow the “gift” part, I just ordered a book called “Unplug the Christmas Machine” by Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli.
A section in the book is about what children really want for Christmas. It is a pretty simple list:
- A relaxed and loving time with their family
- Realistic expectations about gifts (your kids will be disappointed if you allow them to set their own expectations based on commercials or other influences in their lives. If their expectations are set accurately, then they more likely to be excited about what they do get.)
- An evenly paced holiday season (not usually a big problem for us)
- Reliable family traditions (Ben loves our annual ornament exchange game at my mom’s house)
2 comments:
We are cutting back this year too, so maybe we can all share ideas! By the way Jason loved his first class last nite, but is dreading the APA paper!
I've always wanted to just get one or 2 big gifts each year, that's it. So for example, the DS would be the only gift or an IPOD or trampoline or whatever....instead of a bunch...I think that works more for the older kinds. I'm so sickof cleaning up old presents that they didn't want anyway. I'll try to stick to that this year!
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