For the most part, this year is going to be a homemade Christmas. I have been feverishly working on the 12x12 calendars that I am making for my parents and my sister.....I have to admit I was quite flattered when Whit asked me for a calendar for Christmas ~ that is ALL she said she wanted. Now I love to scrapbook, but I don't think I am exactly *THAT* good of a scrapbooker that she'd just be requesting a calendar and nothing else (hope you aren't disappointed Whit!) So here is a little peek at what I have been working on. I still have 7 (I think) more lay-outs to complete before I am done with both of the calendars.
I have been thinking of ways to incorporate more Christmas spirit good into our family during the month of December to take the emphasis off of the materialistic "Me, me, me!" mentality that gets shoved down our throats during Christmas by the various retailers. I'd like to start the "3 gift" tradition with the kids where they get three gifts just like Baby Jesus was given three gifts. I admit, when we started getting all the "Wish books" and such delivered to our house I lost it on the boys when they kept asking, "Mommy, can I get this? And this? And this?...." I marched over to them took the commercialistic propaganda (ha ha) out of their hands and threw it in the trash. In hindsight, that was a little harsh, but I told them no they would not be getting ALL of that stuff because they already have enough stuff that they don't play with or take care of.
I want to work in more of the "Christmas kindness" attitude with the boys, someone on the radio was talking about how, as a child, her family would do good deeds throughout the month of December and every time they did a good deed they'd put a piece of straw in the manger ~they wanted to put as much straw in the manger as they could so Baby Jesus would have a warm bed. I mentioned this idea to Weston and I'd really like to do this with the boys. I think it would really help take the emphasis off of "me" and put it more on "you" and "what can I do to help you."
1 comments:
We do the 3 gift idea with Noah and he only gets 1 for his birthday. My mom thought we were being ridiculous, but I told her I don't want him to be excited about Christmas and his birthday because of presents. Also, I was going to suggest that idea with the straw for you until I read that you already heard about it. We had a book about it growing up, maybe by Max Lucado?, but you should look for it.
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