Is that it?
Three words—uttered by kids—often represent the most dreaded scenario for parents on Christmas morning.
“Is that it?” As in, “Are there really no more presents? This is all I get this year?”
Nobody wants their child to be disappointed on Christmas morning. It is supposed to be a magical day with endless smiles and play. But instead, too often, it ends in disappointment—disappointment for the child as they didn’t get all they wanted and disappointment for the parent as a result.
As parents, we react in different ways. We point out how many gifts they already opened. We promise additional gifts at grandma’s house. Quietly, we wonder how many more presents we needed to buy to make them happy.
And unfortunately, too often, we put the blame on the wrong person—them.
I don’t think anybody means any harm in the words they use with their kids leading up to the holiday season. They are common phrases—holiday classics. The words seem to roll off our parental tongues naturally—sometimes we even think they serve a higher purpose.
When our child misbehaves, we remind them Santa only brings presents to nice boys and girls.
When toys are advertised on TV or in stores and our child expresses interest, we tell them they should put it on their Christmas list.
We count for them how many times this season they will get to open presents: once at our house, Christmas morning at grandma’s house, Christmas evening at the other grandparents’.
We help them write letters to Santa and visit him at the mall so our kids can ask for anything they want. And then, we go back home and hang his likeness all over the house pointing to the promise of Christmas morning.
We hang stockings from our fireplace weeks before the event in anticipation of them being filled.
Even up until the night before, we promise our kids if they go to bed on-time, Santa will be sure to visit overnight with his bag of gifts specifically built for them.
Now, I should be clear, I am not saying there is no room in the Christmas season for tradition and fun and expectation.
But what I am beginning to wonder is, “Are we as parents setting ourselves up for failure? Are we inadvertantly focusing our child’s attention so much on the gifts under the tree, we couldn’t possibly live up to the expectation? Are we the ones to blame?”
A few weeks back, I was conducting an interview for a national magazine. The interviewer asked how we handled the holidays. I responded:
“We have made an intentional decision to still give our kids Christmas presents and their grandparents do the same. We see gift-giving as an appropriate expression of love. From us, our kids receive one thing they want, one thing they need, and one experience to share with the family.”
The journalist’s follow-up question was one I hadn’t heard before. She asked, “Do you find that your kids are disappointed on Christmas morning?”
I had to think before I answered because I wanted to be honest. Eventually, I answered her question, “No. I don’t think they are disappointed on Christmas morning. Maybe they were a little bit the first time, but now they have come to expect it.”
We are very open with our kids about our approach to Christmas and how many gifts they will receive. They know what to expect before the morning even arrives.
Conversely, when we exchange gifts with our extended family, disappointment actually has a better opportunity to arise. There is great anticipation. Nobody knows how many gifts are going to be unwrapped or how much money was spent… but you can almost always bet, in the kids’ mind, there will not be enough.
This holiday season, let’s be intentional about the expectations we set for our kids. Talk less about the gifts under the tree. And talk more about family and friends and faith. Promise fun with the cousins and the joy of being together with family. If you have decided to cut back on holiday gifts this year, tell your kids why—before you sit down around the tree.
Set healthy expectations. Maybe we can avoid holiday disappointment. Even better, maybe we can bring the focus of Christmas back to where it belongs.
EmeraldCityGirl says
Slightly off-topic as this pertains to adults more than kiddos, but I’m hearin SO much these days about “needing to find a gift under $X for a gift exchange” at work, with family, that one’s book club or bowling team or sailing buddies have. Ugh! The lamentations are serious, “I never know what to buy” and “there’s both men and women in the exchange do it’s especially hard to find something” and “”I’m obviously going to spend way more than our limit of $X but I don’t care, I want to get something nice” and (my favorite, from the narcissist) “I want to bring the one thing everyone fights over.”
A column on this, dear Joshua? Please?
I simply don’t participate in these blind exchanges. The fun-to-stress ratio is too far out of whack for me. And I’ve only ever really treasured one gift I received in such an exchange. It was a piece of old technology that is close to a museum piece now, from a prof in my college at a dept party YEARS ago.
Terry says
I don’t participate in these either, they are such a terrible example of buying a gift for someone simply because they are buying for you. At offices I always suggest we simply go out for lunch instead and most people prefer that.
Frances says
Instead of exchanging meaningless gifts, why not have each person bring something to donate to the local Food Bank. There’s still a lot of hungry people out there who can’t afford to buy much.
sarah says
Love this article!
This year is exciting for me since I finally have my husband on board with a simple yet meaningful Christmas. Each of our 5 kids gets a few presents (2-3). Then during the month the of Dec I plan an activity a day as our way to countdown to christmas. I do simple fun things like grow your own candy cane, christmas science experiments, movie night, etc. I just make sure to put my own spin on it, to make it our own. And I don’t tell the kids what we do ahead of time, they have to wait till they get home from school.
To make it even more memorable during each activity I take 1 photo to represent what we are doing and put it into our special album that we make on day 1. Each day we put the previous nights photo in our album before we start our new activity. By the end we have an album full of memories that we created together. This for me is the best gift I could ever have.
Karen T. says
Fantastic idea, Sarah! I hope your family is still doing that this year.
Pat says
Great article! I almost want to pass this onto my grandson’s mom, but I don’t know how it would be taken. The Christmas gifts that are given to grandson and his little sister is overhwelming! A huge pile of toys. He’s 3, and she’s 2, and their play room looks like a mini toy store! I can’t imagine what else is left for them to have. When I saw it I wanted to say “Don’t complain when there’s no money for college because its all here!: But I held my tongue. Since I live out of town I send money, but I wonder if I should specify it to be used for something other than toys? Would that be tacky?
Kandice says
Pat, If you want to make sure money is directed for what it is intended (set aside for college), you might consider setting up a 529 account for the children. You can generally set up (and control) the account, and authorize appropriate future distributions. All you need is the child’s social security number. It’s also possible to change the beneficiary later (for example, kid 1 decides not to go to college, but kid 2 does). If I remember correctly, the minimum amount to set up an account (with Vanguard at least) isn’t totally unreasonable. This might be a good alternative to consider. I also recently read about a gift card that is used for the purchase of shares of stock, in denominations starting around $25. I don’t remember where I read about it, but I’m sure a quick google search would turn it up. Several years ago one set of grandparents shifted gift giving to one gift and a deposit to college funds. The deposit slips are put in the kids’ stockings.
Tracy says
What a fantastic article! So many studies have shown that happiness in life is dependent more on the expectations we have (and whether our life is meeting those expectations) rather than on the life we actually live. This is a good lesson for children and adults alike.
Wendy says
My kids are too little (a two year old and a 12 week old) to worry about how much they’ll receive. My husband and I will decide when we get to that point, but they will never get anything we can’t afford. In the meantime my personal excitement is centered around decorating, baking, making gingerbread houses, the music, and so on. That is what I’ve taken from my childhood experiences. I don’t think about the gifts I did and didn’t receive. Of course I LIKED getting those things at that time, but my best holiday memories are all about the things mentioned above. I hope that my enthusiasm for the first and minimizing the gifts will point our children’s attention towards that part of the holidays. Absolutely the day will come when the comparisons begin and so on, but I hope to set an underlying foundation started by my grandmother in the meantime, even if they don’t really appreciate it until they have children of their own. And I really appreciate my mother’s success in making the weeks leading up to Christmas at least if not more fun than th day itself.
Lisa says
Hi, Wendy! I make a really big deal about all of those experiences as well. My daughters are now almost 4 and 6. They don’t believe in Santa (they know and love the story, but it is just a story to them like any other fun fairy tale). We spend decorating our home, listening to ridiculously loud Christmas music, making tons of inexpensive but fun arts and crafts, etc. Even my 3 year old has memories of us doing those things last year. They forget toys. They don’t forget experiences.
Karen T. says
My mother always managed to do that too. She would buy materials for my brother, sister and I to make some ornaments for the tree, and then we’d help to decorate it. We worked on making a gingerbread house together (one year we even did several small ones and made a gingerbread town). She had us help to address the family Christmas cards, and we took turns reading the Christmas cards we received to each other. We were always part of the Sunday school Christmas program at church, so we would work on our costumes together and sing the music at home in anticipation of that. We helped my dad put up the outside Christmas lights. I’ll never forget the first year my mom let me make her traditional thumbprint cookies that we were giving as gifts to our teachers. All of these activities were part of the fun of Christmas, not just a few minutes opening presents on Christmas morning. And all of these things were to benefit other people as well, not just to indulge ourselves. We learned that part of the “magic” of Christmas is making a special celebration for other people. It was the focus of the whole month of December for us, so Christmas was never just about getting gifts.
Nikki Martinez says
Such a great article! Just what I needed to read today:) Thank you!!!!!
Astrid says
I am Dutch, married to an Englishman.
The first year I spent Christmas with the English family I was flabbergasted. My sister-in-law had only the one child (she has three now) and the credit crisis had not happened yet.
There was a mountain of gifts stretching a metre wide and coming up to my hip. There was only the one 3-year old child, and there were a total of 5 adults including us. Since I was foreign, my part was the smallest, both giving and receiving.
Then the moment came, and the gifts were being torn, ripped, looked at determine what it was and on to the next one. There were gifts from the American part of the family, which had been sent in by mail order comany. Endlessly this was going on.
The 3-year old was the parcel-fairy (don’t know the English term, so I’m making it up) which meant she was told to give the gifts to this and that person. She was running wild with all the attention and ‘duty’ she was performing.
Honestly, I felt sorry for her, even though she was put in the star-shining role. Imagine all the pressure on her, to please everyone who was putting her centre stage of such a frenetic consumerist event.
Then it was over, because all presents had been opened in record time.
Paper was cleared away, and that was is. I didn’t feel like I had experienced the event that all American and English Christmas movies talk about.
Then there was food. Lots of it. It was eaten like any other meal, except that it had taken longer to create it. Then there was a special cake.
I don’t eat cake, but the care with which the cake was admired for its creative christmas theme was the first point where I felt any sence of holiday I was looking for. It was admired, the sister in law was complimented, child was stowed on grandparent’s lap and it was cut and eaten in calm and cozy feeling of joy. That was the best part, even though I don’t eat cake, as I don’t eat sugar.
In the Netherlands there is another fest with presents, and it is done through the sense of respecting that someone had selected something carefully for you. Everyone pays attention when that person unwraps the gift, and we all go ahh over it as it is passed around to show that this was indeed an appropriate or fun gift for that person. The less money spent, the more care there is given that both giver and given person get attention and are cheered. Poems and creative pretty or funny packaging is often part of the deal, which is traditionally made from scraps and take nothing but time and a bit of glue.
It took me a good few years to learn about the English form of gift-giving, and that is about the gift itself. Not about the act of giving. And certainly not about the act of receiving. It’s a set up for rampant consumerism, if the gift is truly what it’s all about. Then as society becomes more wealthy, the gifts have to become my expensive.
I have learned a lot. Now after about 6 Chrismasses, I have finally found a non-thing gift to give our family-in-law. Access to a nearby play park, turned out to be the thing that would give them joy all year.
It’s a step in the right direction. I hope the children will learn – regardless of the indoctrination of earlier years – that experiences are much more lasting than yet another toy.
LL in Prescott says
This sounds just like my husband’s family. It was heavy going to be part of so much excess for me, since I was an only child and much of my childhood Christmas was church-oriented all through Advent. The knee deep in gifts I can top you on. One year that gift pile almost hit the top of the tree! And the ripping and tossing and disrespect of the time and effort that went into the gifts. Ugh. I can so relate to the Parcel Fairy. That poor child wanted to be the star of the show, but it was a frenzied position! Maybe some day I can look back on all of it and laugh. The high octane sugary food, the over consumption of alcohol, the too hot house with so many people in it. Not laughing yet.
Astrid says
I’m not laughing yet either.
I’m aware now that we can change it, slowly and bit by bit. It takes thought and awareness, and a clear goal.
Mine is to put the emphasis back on love, experience, togetherness. And to make clear that a thing is only a thing, but time spent with loved ones is forever a memory to enjoy.
Jeffrey Pillow says
An important value we should instill in our children is gratitude. If gratitude is not at the center of giving and receiving gifts, then it will turn into something wholly negative.
Excess breeds disappointment.
The more gifts you pile on, the more you open yourself to that disappointment.
There is a reason for the season, and whether you are religious or not, American consumerism and excess does not hold the number one or number two spot for the holiday. Make it about your faith and your family or your family and friends, but not about buying unnecessary crap and adding to your mountain of credit card debt.
Hannah says
I am not a parent but if I was one I would agree with just about everything you said.
I really love the idea of telling them exactly how many they will open. It sort of gives them an organized way of looking at Christmas and will help them be more mature in the future.
If anyone here wants to join a community of other minimalists or wants to help people just starting, take a look at my forum discussion. We’re a small group of people all interested in discussing and helping with minimal idealistic lifestyles.
http://becomingminimalistic.net/forums/
Pastor Jamie says
I agree Josh. I wrote about this topic as well, and expectations were a big part of changing our gift giving this year.
http://pastorjamie.com/christmas-how-much-is-enough/