Saturday, December 5, 2009

Santa and kids

When I was growing up all the presents were from Santa. this is how my folks did it so when I had kids automatically this was also the way I did it. Tagged all the gifts from Santa. Well Anja is now 12 and we have a new way to do it. One gift per child is from Santa.

When Anja was little she loved the Christmas magic and we have never been over spenders but i tagged all the gifts as from Santa. The problem with this that I suddenly noticed is that it made her sad because she believed in Santa so she thought that I/we didn't get her anything cuz it was all from Santa. And not wanting to spoil the magic for her I couldn't say "but sweety we got you these gifts". She has never been a selfish child and we never spoiled her with a ton of gifts. But tagging it all from Santa made her feel like we didn't bother to get her anything.

So now there is a 6.5 year difference between her and my oldest boy. Our boys will be 4&6 Come January so we have the ability to switch it up with the boys to save them the feeling that "Mom & Dad didn't get us anything" one gift is tagged from Santa and the others (which will only be a few more each) will be from us.

We do focus on family and togetherness for the season and base most of our Christmas experience around building memories that will last a life time. But i want them to experience the "magic" also.

So, I'm just telling this story so that if anyone was also raised this way and has young children that "From Santa" is nice and the magic of the season is fun, but if over done it can leave the children we love most feeling sort of forgotten.

Just offering another perspective that I wish someone had told me before hand.

2 comments:

Elaine said...

I must admit when I was young it never occurred to me that my parents hadn't given me gifts! We didn't get heaps of things either but there was definite magic!

All the presents were from santa but my mum 'told' santa what I wanted or we shouted it up the chimney on christmas eve. The only problem with that was I used to say 'what I'd really, really like santa, is....' and my mum would go 'oh-oh!' as she hadn't got that and by then it was too late!! Poor mum! Another lesson learned of what not to do when I have kids:-)))

GsCraftsNthings said...

That's neat. Never head of shouting up the chimney! When we fell on hard times while I was pregnant for my youngest I had to hear my daughter tell me "It's alright Mom, I'll ask Santa so you don't have to spend your $$" broke my heart.