Christmas in Texas

Days
'Til
Christmas!

Holiday Hints Index

Keeping Santa's List Manageable

Makin' a List...

• Building Christmas Memories
• Save Holiday Dollars Online
• Keeping Santa's List Manageable

Christmas is an exciting time for kids, but it can also create a lot of confusion and anxiety. While gift giving can be traced to the Magi bearing gifts for the Christ child, in American culture the tradition is so steeped in commercialism, it's difficult to strike a balance between the excitement of holiday gifts and outright greed.

Of course, teaching your child the values behind the holiday can help to deepen their understanding of traditions such as gift giving. But setting limits on requests from Santa can go can go far in turning kids' focus from the purely commercial aspects of the holiday.

Giving to others will enrich your child's understanding of the tradition of gift giving. If you can, set aside a special Christmas allowance for your child to purchase gifts for others. Spend an afternoon making gifts with your child. Encourage participation in toy and food drives that benefit less fortunate families. These types of activities focus the child's attention on the receiver of the gift and allow him to experience a richer depth of the Christmas spirit.

Help your child to make wise requests of Santa. Now I'm not saying you should browbeat him into asking for socks and underwear in his letter to Santa. But you should try to help him sort out what he really cares about and truly wants from the tangle of advertisements that bombard all of us.

When our kids were young, we always put up a beautifully decorated piece of poster board to accomodate their gift requests. The poster board was divided into columns, one for each family member. The first year we found that a single Saturday morning of cartoons was sufficient for the kids to fill their lists full to both margins. The next Saturday, some items were scratched out, and more goodies were scribbled outside the margins with arrows pointing to the requester's name. Our beautifully decorated board was a testament to the ugliness of greed.

After that, we set limits on the number of gifts they could request. Knowing they had to limit the number of gifts they requested rather than asking for every item they saw advertised, helped them to be more discerning in their requests, curb their greed, and allowed them time to think about something other than receiving.

Your family can enjoy a richer Christmas experience by putting limits on gift giving. You'll not only have more money, you'll likely get more than your money's worth in memories.