At first, I was a little embarrassed that we hadn't spent more. But there is a reason why we didn't feel the need to buy our kids everything or more (and trust me, I wanted to badly) and there really is no need for me to be embarrassed because this is what we have chosen for our family. Each family is different and I am sure that each family has traditions and "things" they want to do for their family, so ours is no better or worse than any one else's...we are just...different. And maybe a little quirky, at least my family thinks so:-)
I have been really convicted about the way we have done Christmas. We have always done lots of gifts and had a lot of fun but we lost the meaning of what it really was about. And I want my children's first memories of Christmas to have meaning and not be filled with toys that will get forever lost. I want them to remember "that Christmas" that Coop was Joseph and Eden was Mary and our dog was baby Jesus and how they traveled from afar and our other children were shepherds. And how much fun it was to reenact the nativity story. I want them to remember the awesomeness that was Christ's birth!
This year was a fresh start for Christmas for the Hufford family. We have made it a goal to change our Christmas a little bit every year to hopefully focus more on Christ's birth and life than on the commercial aspect of it.
Here is our plan:
Throw Jesus an awesome birthday party!!! ****raising the roof****
Since we came up with this idea a little on the late side, we are not doing it this year. Next year we plan on having a birthday party on Christmas for Christ. This year, we are settling for a cake. The cake will be red velvet cake with white frosting. We decided this would be the cake because the red symbolizes the blood that was shed for us that now makes us white as snow (that is where the white frosting comes in). We haven't fully decided on all the party plans but we figure we have a year to pull off an awesome party for our King!
Here is where the present side of Christmas in our family came in. Before we had kids (like the three months we were married before we got pregnant - lol) we had made the decision not to do santa. Both of us had grown up with santa and reindeer and presents galore. But for us and our new family, we felt uneasy about telling our kids about a man who has essentially the same characteristics as Christ (kind, loving, giving, etc...) comes and gives gifts and then tell them he wasn't real and expect them to understand that Christ is real (I want to make it clear, that we do not think doing santa is a bad thing, it just isn't something for us). Anywho, here is an article by a pastor we love about our approach to santa: http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/mark_driscoll/2010/12/what_we_tell_our_kids_about_santa.html
Our plan is to do one or two small gifts for our kids. As they get older, the gifts will naturally be more expensive and we will be spending more than $6. But we want our gifts to encourage learning and the love of Jesus. We also want to just give. We want to give gifts to the needy and the poor. We want to love on others as Jesus has loved on us. We are not completely sure what this will look like each year. My guess is that it will change to fit the needs we see in our community near and far.
I randomly stumbled upon a blog that was talking about the blog below and I loved how they do Christmas and while I don't want to do Christmas exactly the same way, I love the fact that they have not given gifts in almost 10 years!!! And their Christmas sounds awesome in my opinion! http://www.christmaschange.com/wordpress/2010/12/03/ten-things-to-do-on-christmas-morning-when-all-the-gifts-are-for-him/
I love how each family is unique and do things differently because we were not all meant to be alike! Christmas is a wonderful time to focus on Christ and family, no matter how your family chooses to do it!
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