My sister and I just pulled all the names for Christmas this year, and it got me thinking," Is this how everyone does it?"
We pull names for the adult siblings and spouses, so, I have my brother Justin and James got my brother Jeremiah. Then we pull names for the cousins, Patrick pulled Isabel, Ella pulled Emma and Autumn pulled Eliot. ( I may switch Patricks and Autumns). Then the aunts and uncles collectively buy for all the nieces and nephews. We ask about 15$ from each couple and then us girls go buy the gifts. Everyone is responsible on their own for mom and dad.
It sounds complicated, huh? The Bloom side is much easier, we skip the adults, except John and Ruth and just buy each niece or nephew one gift from our family.
I have been thinking about Christmas a lot this year, all of the gifts, toys, money flying around.... it just seems to be all too much. My kids DO NOT need any more STUFF. Neither do James or I. But you can't really pull your family out of Christmas without making everyone else feeling guilty. So we have been working on our attitudes about Christmas. Talking about the reason for Christmas. That God GAVE us Jesus, and in the same spirit, we should want to GIVE to others, not just take. Find the joy in giving love, hope, comfort, peace , not the fleeting moment of satiated greed when we tear through the wrapped gifts, only to discard them 2 minutes later.
Our church is doing something called an Affordable Christmas. We do alot of work with the city kids and neighborhoods. This program had church members donate NEW items (books, crafts, toys, makeup kits, anything for teens or kids) and then they host about 150 families to come in and buy for ultra low prices gifts for their children, while feeding them breakfast. Nothing (except the food) is free. This gives the families a sense of empowerment, that they are not just getting charity, but on their own, buying Christmas presents for their children. I love this idea! So every week, on our trip to Target, the kids and I will be picking out things for this program. The kids have been talking about it all week.
I want to encourage this thought process for Christmas and not just what they "want" and will put on their "list".
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6 comments:
Excellent use of English grammar.
yikes! does that mean i totally screwed it up? i can never tell if you are serious or not.
Eryn, I really appreciate you posting your thoughts on this. It's an area that we're constantly working on. And I agree, it's hard to buck the family system.
We don't have a formal arrangement with our families, which is nice. But it's still challenging to try to encourage the grandparents to practice moderation. I appreciate your thoughts on focusing on attitude and perspective with ourselves and our children. We have found over the last couple of years that some of the Advent traditions have been helpful in establishing focus. I should do a post about that soon... ;-)
Oh, and I think that the Affordable Christmas idea is terrific! What a neat outreach.
I LOVE the affordable Christmas idea.
We don't have any method in our families, but there really ought to be. I don't think there's enough people to do it for. On my side there are only two cousins for the kids and on my husband's side there aren't any.
You didn't screw it up, not at all. I thought you wrote that very well indeed.
who is clumsy ox and why is he harassing you?
I was just thinking about this post today as I make my lists...I think I am going to post something about it.
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