Children's Gift Giving for Dummies

Our strategy for buying our kids' Christmas gifts has been in the process of fine-tuning for a few years. We now have what I consider a pretty brilliant idea. It keeps yearlong consumerism to a minimum and the kids end up getting what they want at Christmas.

The strategy? you ask. It's simple: don't buy them everything they want all year long. If it's not birthday or Christmas or a cold day in hell, it's not likely we're out buying a video game just because one of our precious pumpkins just HAAAAAS to HAAAAVE it. They can save up their chore money for it... which poses a problem for them most times, because we actually require work for payment rendered.

So, come Christmas, we have a very good list of pickings from which to choose. It looks like we spoil our kids at Christmas sometimes, but it's because we neglect them the rest of the year. (Well, at least that would be their story.) We give them one large gift on their birthday, but we haven't done (or overdone) a birthday party since they were five. They get to choose where/what we eat on their birthday, and they get their one large gift.

On Christmas morning, our kids are usually overjoyed with their gifts, because they aren't inundated and oversaturated with crap all year long.

(We also adopt as many kids as we can from the Salvation Army Angel Tree, and we shop for them together, and then we volunteer our time to help distribute all the toys to the families. It's  a great way to help the kids realize how good we live life.)

Comments

[Jennifer]

I'm a little late for Christmas... but that is how I grew up. I loved Christmas... I always got what I wanted but never knew WHAT it was going to be!