setting up stockings… making sure Santa gets some credit this year… but not much.

Our family is a little odd… or a lot.  We had a family discussion where we needed to decide which way the kids wanted to continue…

1. keep getting cool gifts from mom and dad all year or
2. sacrifice monthly gifts for some cool stuff at Christmas.

The problem starts with forcing the gift purchasing unto parents that can’t afford the commercialization of this holiday season.  Nobody in their right mind would argue that, not in Canada, where we now celebrate black Friday a month after our Thanksgiving for the sole purpose of  bumping forward the start of the Christmas shopping season.

But that is not where the problem ends because it is compounded by the pressure of parents like us to out-do the things that they have purchased all year.  That would get expensive, and it has in our past.  so not only is the Christmas season requiring more gifts than I purchased all year, but bigger and better ones.  So this is where it ends in our home.  Santa can come by once a year and stuff some stockings but the presents under the tree will be from mom and dad and at much less volume than the kids were used to in the past.

I recently had a conversation with kidlet number eight (Russel, the 6 year old) about what Christmas was about.  It didn’t take him much to figure out that it was Jesus’s birthday, which in itself was impressive to me but then when I asked him who got presents on his birthday he was quick to respond that he was the one that got presents on his birthday.  Then I asked him who got gifts on Jesus’s birthday?  He seemed honestly confused.  We had a good little chat about the fact that not only did everyone get gifts on Christmas, but apparently Jesus had been left out.

So on top of cutting back on gift purchases, we now decided to find some gifts for Jesus for next Christmas.  I wanted to start collecting some ideas and was wondering if anyone had any ideas like volunteering at a homeless shelter or something if they could post them here or email me.  I would love to find some things to do with a 4-7 year old, a 9-11 year old and a 15-17 year old.  I would love to pick three things for next year so that I can do something the kidlets will remember as their gift to God next Christmas holiday season.

this year’s family present