Saturday, December 5, 2009

Christmas traditions

We don't have alot of Christmas traditions as far as gifts. We do wear Christmas pajamas to open our presents on Christmas day, watch The Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation about a hundred times during the holidays and buy an ornament for each kids every year. I would love to start a new tradition since Preston and Lily are young enough and Ashley is old enough. The tradition is involving gifts. Every year I take a look around and think these kids have way too much. I can remember growing up there were years we had alot and a few years we had very little and I mean like 1 gift that my parents had to scrap money together to buy. Now that Ashley is older she is at the age where if she asks for something, within reason, she gets it. She is a good kid her grades are good, she does things around the house and helps with the kids. There isn't anything she needs. Preston and Lily are the same way. For all my kids before summer we get a few summer outfits before winter we get snow suits, jackets and the necessities. Then Christmas comes around and I am completely stumped. What in the world do I buy this year. I saw somewhere online a tradition that a family has started that I absolutely love.
4 gifts only:
Something they Want, Something they Need, Something to Wear, Something to Read

That pretty much narrows the gift giving down. I would love to try this next year. I have also wanted to adopt a family through maybe a women's shelter or something. Hopefully by doing this my kids will be able to see the reason for the season is not an over abundant amount of gifts. I love hearing about traditions that families share. What are yours?

3 comments:

Robyn said...

My kids have way too much. This year i did something similar to you. They each got a book, a toy, a tshirt, and jammies. Santa will bring a combined gift for the 3 boys, and Ashley will get her own. They all have their own stockings to hang. We have also decided to adopt a family this year as well. We've always purchased from Christmas Angel trees, but this year we decided that Tim and I didn't need to exchange gifts so we wanted to share with others in need. Our small group (Bible study) has adopted a couple of small families and we are excited about helping them out. It's truly a blessing when you get to a stage in your life where you honestly don't need a single thing, and you have the means to help others. Good luck Staci!

Freckles Fotography said...

I love that staci. Great idea. Each of my kids usually gets 2 gifts and maybe 2 "santa" gifts. Thats it. They seem not to appreciate the more they get. Most of this is lack of money but most of it is like you said, They dont NEED anything!
I also love the idea of adopting a family. I wanted to do that with a family from KSBJ's giving tree. Not this year but hopefully next year!

Deanna Addison said...

I feel the same way, William is getting to that age where I want to have the traditions now that he will grow up with. We are doing only 3 presents. It was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for our kids too! I'm sure my shopping issues will come into play, so there may be 3 from Santa and 3 from Mom and Dad.