Now that all of the craziness of Christmas has slowed down, I've started to reflect a bit. Ok a lot. LOL. And I can admit that I am guilty of getting wrapped up in the consumerism of Christmas. I wish I could say that our Christmas celebration has always been about Jesus. I would be embarrassed now to even share pictures of a few of our early Christmases with kids. Even now, I have trouble suggesting ideas for our relatives about what to gift the kids because they. have. every. thing. EVERYTHING. Slowly though, over the last several years, DH and I have both come to realize how over-the-top it all is. Actually, I think it's fair to say that DH always thought I went overboard, so maybe I had to catch up to him first in my thinking ... and we are both now realizing that the smaller-scaled gifting version of what we do is still probably too much.
I don't want my kids growing up thinking that's what Christmas is ... just a day when they get to unwrap mounds of gifts that they may or may not play with. And frankly, I don't want to celebrate Christmas like that. It's expensive and stressful! I mean, the WHOLE POINT of Christmas is to celebrate our Savior's birth and what He sacrificed for us. We have added some traditions into our Christmas celebration to bring Jesus to the forefront ... we talk about Jesus' birthday quite a bit and do a few other things. But let's face it, the kids are still mostly excited about those gifts on Christmas morning. Regardless of whether they come from us, another family member, or that one gift from Santa ... that's the main excitement for them.
So how do I change that? For my kids? For my family? At least for the gift-giving part, we are going to implement The Story of 3 Gifts next year for the kids ... adopted (stolen) from my dear friend Kelly. For the first time this year, I read her post about how they "do" Christmas and I thought to myself, THAT is what we should be doing. Making the gifts *mean* something to the kids. Making them *think* about what Jesus did for us. I loved it and shared it with DH, and he loved it too. He even shared it with someone else after that. And now I'm sharing it with you. I'm excited about this change and am looking forward to working on a few other changes as well.
Watching the Advent Conspiracy video really opened my eyes as well. If you haven't viewed it yet, I encourage you to do so. I don't want to write anything about it because I think the video will do the talking. Maybe it will affect you in the way it did me and DH. We watched a version of it at church too and changed a (small) portion of our gift-giving this year to reflect what we saw.
This video got me to start thinking. My life is full of choices. I make small decisions every second of the day ... whether to get that cup of Starbucks (guilty!!), whether to buy the extra toy for my kids (guilty!!) ... or whether to buy that one extra thing on Amazon because it was free shipping (GUILTY!!!). Truly, I do not *need* most of the things I buy. I am so guilty of buying extra junk that I don't need. What if I stopped buying just a small portion of those non-essentials and put that money toward something GOOD? Wouldn't THAT be a true birthday gift for Jesus?
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Matthew 6: 19-21
So happy to have you steal it, girl. I stole it myself - I read about something sort of similar to what we do in a little column in some magazine about 11 years ago...how's that for vague? We sorta took the idea and claimed it as our own and am thrilled to hear you will be our 3-gift buddies next year. We can share ideas. :)
ReplyDeleteI've got a lot to change in my life...thank you for helping me to see that this area is one of them :)
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