Christmas … the season where “peace on earth and good will to all men” is “celebrated” … blew in and out like Hurricane Katrina this year for us. We still have the occasional bow blowing across the hallway in tumble weed fashion. Yet, it was somehow worth it, for we packed in two really meaningful long trips to see family … both as Thanksgiving and Christmas. We also had family blow into our “serene” harbor.
I would do it all just same again and again.
I would not do any of it anywhere close to it if we were still running the glitzy commercialized treadmill. Nope, we got off that quite some time ago. It’s been a rather interesting trek off the beaten dollar path into meaningful “presence” and away from glitzy “presents.” Our little girls are 3 and 1 this year, and though we’ve exiled Santa, he still keeps lurking around our bushes. Evidently ADT hasn’t picked up on him yet. As if our girls magical ages weren’t enough stuffing for our turkey of a season, our oldest turned 3 on the December 30th … thus a birthday to pack into Santa’s sleigh.
While we could have gone cold turkey on gifts altogether, we decided to play it flexible and shift the system in a better direction. One part of our family drew names this year, and another part is considering a similar move. Though, they played naughty instead of nice, some of our church people drew names as well (but in the end bought gifts for all kids). This Santa and his Mrs. Clause went through our clothes and books, while our little elf (which we are very proud of) went through her toys. We made a rather nice gift box for a needy mother and a humble donation to the Salvation Army. With our little elf’s birthday a few days around the Christmas corner we sent out party invitations with the express desire “Please, no gifts!” Most were nice instead of naughty on this one.
Now many of you might be thinking us to be rather naughty instead of nice! How can you do that to those little girls! Who ever heard of such madness!!!
Our little elves weren’t hurting this year at all for presents. Nope, not in the least. They were well taken care of. However, we trimmed the fat rather heavily. Many gifts to our family were financial, which were then placed into educational investment accounts for the girls. Hey, an 18 year old Barbie Doll is not going to do much towards helping to pay for college! In the end we are giving our girls the best gift of all … training them to be givers, investors, and producers before they are gluttonous, snot-nosed consumers.
