So I have come up with a Santa plan this year and thought I would share it with everyone and also welcoming your ideas. I have been noticing that Ali has been progressively asking Santa for more and more expensive and specific items for Christmas. I was a little late this year, but from now on at the beginning of December we are going to sit down together and write a letter to Santa simply just telling him what we are interested in. We are going to give him ideas of what kinds of things we like and we are going to let him decide what he wants to give us. Afterall, we don't want to get greedy or picky about our gift from Santa or that might put us in the naughty category. I just came up with this idea and thought it would be a good solution to running around town trying to find the very specific and expesive gift that the kids have asked Santa for and are very much EXPECTING to get.
The other tradition that we started last year was a gift for Jesus. We thought since it was his birthday that he deserved a present. I wrapped up some boxes so we can take the lids on and off. We center the gifts around a Family Home Evening. We think about ways to improve ourselves and make Jesus happy. This year we pulled out our papers that had our gifts from last year written on them and read them to see how we had done over the past year. Ali's gift was to not complain about being on her knees for family prayer. She has done excellent. Then we came to my gift: "For Jesus, I will not yell at the kids. Love, Mom" I looked up at my family with a little sheepish smile knowing that I had not fully kept up on this particular gift. Ali looked at me and said (very nicely by the way), "maybe you should keep working at that gift to Jesus because you still yell a lot." Needless to say it is back on my gift to Jesus for this year again and I am going to try really hard. I really like doing this tradition because it is the ONLY gift we put under the tree for the whole month until Christmas mornging. That way the kids aren't looking at what is for them or focusing on worldly things. Everytime we look at the tree we see those presents for Jesus and it helps remind us of what we need to work on.
7 comments:
Wow! Those are outstanding ideas! Thank you for sharing them. You are such an amazing Momma!
Great idea! And great job tying "selfish/greedy" to "naughty" - I'll have to keep that in mind! :-)
And you sure picked an ambitious gift, LOL! You're much braver than I am, LOL...
Those are both great ideas.
We always told the kids that no matter what they put on their Santa lists, he couldn't bring everything and it was up to him to decide what he did bring. lol...they've always written lists like 35-40 items long, but then I just pick and choose what I want to buy.
We also had a gift thing, but we put the Baby Jesus in the box. On Christmas morning as we ate breakfast (which is always BEFORE opening gifts) we would open the gift and talk about the gift of Jesus and how much Heavenly Father loves us to send his son to do the things he did for us. And howm much Jesus loves us to do those things. I've always liked having those spiritual moments before the gifts.
What great ideas, I really love the idea with the gift for Jesus, I might steal that idea from you.
Sorry you are STILL pregs, good luck and happy thoughts sent your way! :)
Very creative with the gifts for Jesus! I think that the Santa idea is a great idea too, I did that when I was little and it worked very well for our family.
Those are awesome ideas! I like the first one about not being specific because I found Maryn doing the same thing like "I want a camera but not a camera phone". Too specific for a 3 year old.
Wonderful traditions Tiff. I like them!
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