The WGOM

If it makes you feel even better, I have the same opinion on Christmas gifts. I don't want any, and I think the world (or at least , my world) would be a whole lot better if it wasn't the tradition.

I agree with you but plenty of others don't. All I do is try to keep things relatively reasonable. If gift giving makes them happy, I guess I'll go along with it. I'm just getting tired of the kids getting big toys.

I don't care how much someone wants to spend on my kids. We just don't need another full Playskool kitchen set or anything like that taking up any more room.

Mrs. A and I have cut way back on our Christmas giving in recent years. One of the reasons for that is financial--we make significantly less than any of our siblings (and almost all of our nieces and nephews), so that anything we could afford to give them that they actually want they already have. We will sometimes get a box of candy or something for them, but that's about it. You're exactly right, as we get older you realize that what you really want to do at Christmas is just spend time with the people you love. That also becomes more important as we get older because those times get harder to come by, and we start to realize that our time for them is limited.

I'm not sure what you do about kids, though. I agree that it's wrong to teach them that Christmas is about getting stuff, but at the same time, it wouldn't be much fun to be the only kid you know whose parents gave to a homeless shelter instead of getting them a present. Not that this makes it the wrong thing to do; it just would be tough to explain. I think if someone was going to do something like that, it would need to be something they lived throughout the year, so that it became a part of the child's understanding of how people are supposed to live. That's not to say that it couldn't be emphasized at Christmas, but it would need to start sooner than that.

Which is not to say that you don't do that--I wouldn't have any idea. Also, I don't have kids, so I'm not exactly qualified to write on the subject. But I was a kid once (a long time ago), and while my parents did give generously to charities, and never went overboard for us at Christmas, I know I would have been awfully disappointed to not get anything, even if they told me the money went to a good cause.

I'd lie if I said I didn't like receiving presents, but there honestly isn't anything I need/want for Christmas. Which is why my wife/daughter hate shopping for me.

Our church runs several Christmas Eve services of several different formats on the 24^th, and it's our family tradition the last few years to just show up and help out for 4-5 hours during the busy time. Besides the designated church service when the choir sings, we've ended up helping in the nursery, adding chairs to the overflow, helping find seats, and even one year shovelling sidewalks for most of the evening. When time comes to go home and open presents, we're usually pretty bushed. Christmas day is for phone calls to relatives and cider with whichever neighbors are around.

I can never have enough frying pans, saute pans, roasters, soup pots, kitchen gadgets, etc. So I'm easy to buy for.

Mrs. S, on the other hand, is an enigma. I never know what to get her unless she leads me by the nose and, well, she's a woman. So she picks and chooses when to lead me by the nose and this is one area where she perpetually leaves me adrift.

I was going to say she's a "cypher." But then I looked it up and learned that the word means "person of no importance." Huh? I always thought it was more like "mystery/enigma/puzzle". You learn something new every day.

One of my favorite Christmas memories is from the first year my wife and I were together. We were living in Cedar Rapids, and we were so poor we could barely make the rent. I had to work on Christmas Eve and got home around 6:00pm. Pam had dinner ready for us, a beef roast with potatoes and carrots and a nice, savory gravy. We ate our dinner, listened to some Christmas music, and then got dressed and went to the early service at church. It had snowed a bit the night before, a couple of inches I think, and the flurries had continued off and on throughout the day. After church, with nothing better to do, we decided on a whim to drive down to the Amana colonies. It was the most charming scene you could imagine, all the houses were plain and white and bare of decoration except for a single candle burning in each window and an occassional wreath hung on a door. The night was cloudy and hushed the way a winter night is after a snowfall, and it was the most peaceful setting I could imagine. There were no other cars around, nobody out and about, and it felt like we were driving around inside a Norman Rockwell painting or a Currier and Ives print. After a while we drove home and exchanged our meager gifts (I think she got me a very inexpensive watch, and I honestly can't recall what I got her). Christmas day itself was anti-climatic since I had volunteered to work so the other producers could spend the day with their families. But that Christmas Eve when we had next to nothing exept each other will always be one of my favorites, even though it seemed pretty disappointing at the time.

I'm thankful my immediate family doesn't celebrate Christmas. I never have to fret about what to buy my siblings and parents--it's hard enough every year on their birthdays. We still celebrate Christmas with my dad's family, and buying a present for grandma is difficult enough. (And we do a name drawing, which always depends on who you get how easy it is...people have too much stuff!) Frankly, that's why I like Thanksgiving better than Christmas. The entire family gets together, partake in a good meal, and spends the day enjoying each others' company.

I was born in the same hospital as my dad. That's good enough for me.

I agree with your sentiments on the holiday season, I really despise the feeling of not being 'merican because I don't shop the day after thanksgiving. The pork chop and I make most of our gifts, usually irreverent t-shirts for my brothers, art work for the parents and stuffed toys for the nieces and nephew. I really feel like a hand made gifts say it all. I mean, nothing says 'I love you bro' more than a pair of sweat pants that read 'juicy' across the ass.

I heard about this foundation and their efforts to redefine Christmas.

I enjoy gifting gifts to people as it is one of my ways of telling somone, "Hey, I appreciate you, and I know this is something you really want." It doesn't have to be expensive. A sentimental picture in a frame. I made a friendship bracelet once by hand. Get a book that someone has had their eye on for a year and they didn't think anyone even knew they wanted it.

Of course, any sane person would realize that celebrating Jesus by going to Best Buy and swiping your plastic is ridiculous. Being a devout atheist, I don't have this personal conundrum. But being charitable, good to others, and celebrating the Lord is not something you can teach your children just one day of the year. You have to immerse them in it so it becomes part of their life, not just a one-time obligation. On the flip side, I think traditions like gift-giving are fine as long as it doesn't harbor a sense of entitlement. What you wind up is with adults who think they deserve everything, max out their credit cards, then wind up wanting a bailout when it all collapses in on itself. It digusts me when I see kids at the store yelling, "I want, I want, I want!" I never remember asking my parents for anything, any time of the year, because I knew I wouldn't get it. I still don't want for anything. Thus, I enjoy Christmas whether I get something I like or not, because the greatest gift is being around people that love me. And I can get that gift on Thanksgiving or any other number of weekends throughout the year, whenever I want.