A simple and fun Christmas Gift System

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One thing I have noticed over the years, is that some people can get a little overboard when it comes to Christmas gifts. So when I heard of this amazing Christmas gift system, I knew I had to use it. I adapted it a little bit, so let me share what has worked for our family for years now.

This week’s video

The principle

So let’s start with the way we handle Christmas gifts. It’s actually really simple

You can honestly go with different things here, but let me share why I chose these four categories:

• Want: I want to make sure the kids have something they actually really want to have. Not too expensive, but just something they like. So my Lego loving child gets that while my doll loving child gets something for her dolls.
• Need: For their need gifts, I try to make sure the gifts are needs but fun. For example, our oldest wants his own Bible, and this is something he actually needs. So that will be his need gift. Our daughter needs a new jewelry box, so that is what she will get as a need gift. I try to stay away from a toothbrush or socks, it might be a need but it’s not really fun to open up toothpaste on Christmas morning.
• Do: Something that I think is very important for children, is to develop their creativity. So instead of the original ‘wear’ category, I decided to replace it with a ‘do’ category. This category involves something like a sticker book, a drawing board, play doh, etc.
• Read: Well, this is kind of obvious, but we always give books during Christmas (and their birthdays). One of my main focuses for the kids’ education is turn them into readers. So it is important to us that they have books they will love to read and that will help them become better readers.

Why we decided to limit Christmas gifts

Now you might be wondering why we limit our gifts. Even though, they still get 4 gifts each, I know many people will think this is not a large amount of things. And I can see why. Our society is focused on consumption so we are constantly encouraged to give more and bigger gifts. So let me explain our three most important reasons to limit the amount of Christmas gifts:

• Reason for the season. We don’t ever want our children to think Christmas is all about gifts. Yes gifts are fun, but the real reason for the season is Jesus coming to earth and celebrating His birth. So that is what we focus on with the kids and always remind them of. It’s not about gifts, it’s about Jesus!
• Budget. Another reason why we started to limit gifts is because we did not want to spend too much on Christmas. I talk about this in this post, but staying within your budget during the holidays can be hard, especially if you don’t limit yourself when it comes to gifts. So have a budget (and stick to it!)
• Overwhelm. The amount of videos I have seen of YouTubers getting the most insane amount of toys for their kids is ridiculous. And most of those kids open a gift, throw it aside, get another one, throw it aside, etc. Until they have opened all of them. And then they don’t know what to play with because they have so much. Talking about overwhelm. Children don’t need a lot of toys. This is also the reason why we do toy rotation; to help reduce the overwhelm.

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