When I think about Christmas as a child, I think about a mountain of gifts under the Christmas tree, and it was always so exciting!! But as an adult, thinking about a mountain of gifts makes me cringe. I’m something of a minimalist, so when it comes to most things, I’m constantly looking for ways to have less stuff and more space.
In years past, we gave “something you want, need, wear, read” to each person; Santa brought one gift to each person; siblings exchanged gifts; and grandparents gave gifts as well. With 7+ gifts per person (28!!), it started to feel like too much!
This year, we’re trying to be more intentional about our gift-giving.
More intentional gifts
While there’s nothing wrong with the “want, need, wear, read,” framework, it didn’t seem to fit my desires for gift-giving at this time. If my girls need something, I buy it when they need it, including clothing. While I love reading to my girls, I don’t desire a huge collection of children’s books for me or for them (to take when they leave home), so I’d rather use the library in most cases. And as far as wants go, my girls have plenty of toys (more than I’d like!), so I like to limit the toy accumulation.
When I started thinking about gift-giving this year, I thought about the things I value (and hope my girls will value, too) that could be given as gifts. The main values I thought of were learning/growth and family/relationships, so all of our gifts fit into those categories this year.
Gifts of Togetherness
First of all, we do a daily Christmas activity together as a family all throughout December. This quality time together helps us feel close and connected throughout the month! You can read more about this tradition in this post.
Gift of Learning/Growth
Holly’s “gift of learning” is an apron, just her size, because she loves to get up on the counter while I’m cooking. She wants to see (and touch, and taste) everything that’s happening! I want to encourage her to learn more about cooking with this gift, since she’s already so interested in it.
Ada’s “gift of learning” is two scissor practice books. She loves doing crafts and using scissors and glue, so I know she’ll enjoy these guided practices.
My “gift of learning” is several parenting books for the SCSP Parenting Book Club. I mentioned earlier that I don’t like to have a collection of books — but the exception is when it’s a book that I know I’ll want to look back over in the future. I don’t want to always have to check it out from the library! Parenting books are the kind of book I want to reference later.
Russ’s “gift of learning” is some gear for astrophotography. This is a hobby he’s been developing over the last several months, so the new gear will help him further his knowledge and skills in this area.
Gift of Family
Like I said above, what is meaningful to me is our family, and I always want to encourage strong family relationships! This year, both girls are getting photo gifts centered around family. For Ada, I made a puzzle that has several favorite family photos from the year, and for Holly, I made a “family names and faces” book that has all her aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents in it. I didn’t personalize these gifts for each girl, so both girls will be able to enjoy both gifts.
Russ and I couldn’t really think of anything for ourselves that fit this category, so we skipped it. Plus, I always order our family yearbook in January, so that basically serves as a gift of meaning to the whole family, but it can’t come on Christmas Day :)
Gifts of Bonding
With the remaining gifts under the tree, I want to encourage family togetherness. I don’t like the “mine mine mine” mentality that can come from getting so many presents on Christmas Day, and I want my kids to be able to share well. With those things in mind, everything else we’re giving this year (which isn’t really much 🤣) is for two or more people in the family.
For Ada and Holly, we got a play makeup kit and a StairSlide. The StairSlide cost more than we’ve ever spent on a single Christmas gift, but I really wanted fewer, better gifts, and I think the girls will LOVE playing on this together, especially on days when I don’t feel like leaving the house in the winter. For the family, we got two games, one that even Holly should be able to play!
I’d be open to getting more gifts in this category, but there wasn’t really anything else we wanted or needed.
Sibling Gifts
Since we don’t give many toys for Christmas, the toys come in in the gifts the girls give to each other. My hope is that they’ll each be thoughtful about choosing their gifts for each other, and that they’ll be so happy and grateful to receive a toy from each other, especially since it’'ll pretty much be the only toy they get!
This year, we gave each girl a $10 budget and we went to Walmart as a family. We spent some time looking through the toy aisles, with both girls pointing out things they liked. Then, Russ took Ada, and I took Holly, and we separated for a bit so that Ada could choose Holly’s present, and vice versa. Both girls chose a princess Barbie for her sister. However, Ada kept talking about wanting a Princess Leia Barbie (not something we saw at Walmart), so when I found one on Amazon for $17, I decided to let Holly go over budget so Ada could get what she really wanted (and then I returned the other princess Barbie).
Santa
We don’t talk a ton about Santa, but we also don’t teach that he isn’t real. We don’t think there’s anything wrong with Santa, but we definitely choose to focus more on Jesus than Santa. When we do talk about Santa, we talk about how generous he is, and how we can help him spread joy and gifts to others.
One way we do this is by decluttering toys for Santa. The kids go through their toys leading up to Christmas and pick some to leave for Santa to take to other kids. (But then we actually donate anything they choose to get rid of that is nice enough.)
This year, Santa will only fill stockings (no wrapped gift under the tree). I always loved opening my stocking as a kid, so I think even with doing stockings only, Santa will still deliver plenty of fun.
In the girls’ stockings, we’re putting bubble bath, fun bandaids, socks, underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, candy, and little princess figures.
My stocking will have makeup, socks, scrunchies, and candy. Maybe some earrings.
Russ’s stocking will have car cleaning putty… and candy. We need more ideas for his stocking, clearly 🤣
Grandparents
If grandparents ask what we want for the kids, we usually give them an experience gift idea or ask for lessons of some sort; sometimes grandparents simply send money, which I honestly just put in the girls’ bank accounts 🙈🤣
Fewer gifts this year means I anticipate a pretty short Christmas morning, but that just leaves plenty of time to play together all day long. We’re going to play our new games, slide on the StairSlide, read books, watch movies, and eat yummy food all day long, and maybe we’ll even get to play in snow together! I think our day will still be magical even without a mountain of presents under the tree, and our intentional gifts will make the day even more special :)
How does your family do holiday gifts? :)