For those of you who do not know how/what we do for Christmas today I am going to tell you :)
We do not do a bunch of Christmas presents on Christmas morning. My children do not believe in Santa and are not expecting him to bring them a million toys. Actually, we do not buy them any presents on Christmas. They will get something from their grandparents, but we don't buy them big gifts. We will fill their Christmas stockings with candy and little stuff, but that is it.
Christmas is NOT about gifts. In my opinion our culture is way to materialistic. People tend to only care about themselves and what they are going to get. Black Friday has turned into knocking people down (and in some places even shootings have occurred) because people want to buy something on sale. Some people feel that their kids need to have 50+ presents to open on Christmas morning. It is absurd.
Our kids do NOT need a million toys. They break, I get annoyed with picking them up, and more importantly they don't NEED them. We started this tradition a couple of years back. We decided that instead of buying our kids gift for Christmas we were going to spend Christmas focused on what Christmas is actually is about!
We spend the month of December focused on Christ, our friends/family and others in our community. Everyday leading up to Christmas we pick a different activity that has a Christmas type of theme. We do something fun together as a family, a craft or something for others in our community.
So far this month we have.....
Rode the train at the mall
This was a Carson favorite!!
We bought presents for an Angel Tree child.
The kids were in a performance at church.
The 3 oldest all sang in the performance.
Gabby did a skit and Mariela sang a solo :)
We also ate at the community table one night
and today we are making cookies for wounded veterans.
Here are a few activities that are planned for the next couple of weeks.
Christmas parade
Making cookies for the fire dept
making ornaments
helping out at Toys for Tots
making a meal for someone
making goodie bags for the homeless.....
just to name a few.
I am sure I will blog about all of our fun activities throughout the month :)
We really like to focus on others and on making memories together as a family, NOT on how much junk can we accumulate this holiday season.
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