Every year around this time I start to ponder Christmas. The gifts, the meaning and the legacy and traditions I want my little family to remember. It seems every year I decide to make it a homemade Christmas. I get excited at the lessons I will be teaching my kids. Things like Christmas being about the birth of our Savior and that giving is what brings us joy during this wonderful season. But somewhere along the way I get caught up in the commercialism of it all, and my visions of a homemade meaningful Christmas become lost in the search for store bought gifts. I think as a mother I want to give my kids what ever I can. I don't want to disappoint them, and somehow I give into the mind set that giving them what they want for Christmas will show them just how much I love them. This is of course all subconscious. Typing it out makes it sound beyond ridiculous. But it happens just the same.
I don't know that this post has a point other than I have been thinking about how I can change the focus in our home at Christmas time. We talk to our kids about the true meaning of Christmas and we read the story of the Savior's birth in Luke each Christmas morning, but is this enough? Are we showing them the true meaning?
I hope that this year we can show them and not just tell them. Weather or not this is accomplished by a homemade Christmas or not, I am not sure...but that seems as good a place as any to start.
How about you? How have you kept the focus in your home on the Savior and on giving rather than the latest must have toy?
Monday, November 16, 2009
Thoughts on Christmas
Posted by Terrie at 12:56 PM
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5 comments:
that is great! this is the first year Evie really can know and understand all aspects of it. But unfortunately this year non of us are really buying presents anyway. Our Christmas is flying home for Christmas! so that outs any and all gifts! Lucky she is also at the age of not caring about how many gifts she gets and Lilly doesn't know what is going on!
I think it's always a great idea to do some kind of service project where the kids are involved - sometimes they can even donate money they've earned to the cause.
Larry really loves this time of year, as do I, but he hates that Santa seems to be the focus. So, for the first few years we didn't have "Santa" gifts. As the kids are more aware it is hard to not give them something from Santa but it is always something very small...not the main gift. We really try to focus on the real reason we celebrate Christmas. Now I just need to teach them about giving and not just receiving.
What a great post Terrie. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Christmas. I feel the same way and like you, every year, the true meaning gets lost somewhere.
We decided this year to only get the kids three presents each, to represent The Wise Men's gifts to Christ. I know it's small, but I hope that it will be a small reminder of why we celebrate Christmas.
An idea we have tried out is 1 or 2 presents from Santa and a few more little ones from mom and dad. The rest should focus on having fun as a family or doing an act of service as a family, ie: serving in a soup kitchen sometime in Dec or suprise Christmas gifts to someone who needs it. We are struggling to make good traditions too. We are at the beginning so we can start whatever we want because we don't have any yet! Good luck. You are doing better at teaching them true values of CHristmas than you think.
-Emily G. =)
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