Before Trey and I were even thinking about having Perrin, we talked about how we didn't want Christmas for our family to be all about presents. We wanted to focus on the significance of the birth of Christ and on spending time together as a family.
Now, here we are--Perrin's first Christmas. Will we hold true to our convictions? Here's a snapshot into our life as a family this season:
Me: (While walking around with Trey in WalMart) "It's not like Perrin's going to remember this Christmas anyway, so I don't think we need to go crazy with presents."
Trey: "I agree. Just a couple things. He'll be more interested in playing with the wrapping paper anyway."
Me: "Yep, so just a couple little things. We'll hardly spend any money at--OH MY GOSH! Look, it's a robot bunny that plays hide and seek with you! That is SO cool!"
Trey: "Ooh, and here's a submarine he can play with in the bathtub. We HAVE to get that."
Jayna: "And one of these baby laptops. Maybe now he'll stay away from mine."
Trey: "And don't forget we have to get stuff to fill up his stocking."
So... score 10 points for the commercialization of Christmas, zero so far for our hopes of injecting the true meaning of Christmas into our son's young life. I never thought it would be so hard to keep from spoiling him. I do have a child-friendly nativity that I'm going to set up and let him play with, and we'll read some Christmas books and sing Christmas carols that will be meaningful (or at least would be if he could understand them). Hopefully we'll end up with a good balance in the end.
Don't worry. We all did our best parenting before we had kids. It's the same for us. We were never going to do Santa but somehow (I think Christmas specials on Disney had something to do with it) Emma has latched on to the idea, and she is so excited about Santa coming. We still haven't decided what to do. I'm trying to tell her the true story of St. Nick but I'm afraid she'll still be crushed if Santa doesn't visit.
ReplyDeleteThis is funny, Jayna! Try to control yourself, okay? Because the grandparents can't. Spoiling is our job, after all.
ReplyDeleteLindsay, this is so true! We'd all be perfect parents, as long as there were no children in the equation.
I love your blog Jayna! As a parent I can easily relate. I'm sure Perrin will be a well balanced man. It's just hard when we are so far down in the trenches, sometimes we don't seem to see the light out there.
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ReplyDeleteOne thing about 'the Santa question' that I've noticed is that it requires patience because it takes YEARS to gently make your kid understand that Santa is not real but that he is a kind of symbol for ideas and concepts that are very real. Little things like not labeling gifts "from Santa" help and also mom and dad not talking about him like he's real, but so does focusing on stories based on the Biblical account more than the ones about Santa. Familiarizing your kid w/ adjacent concepts like symbolism is good too. What's helped most of all is remembering that I don't have to dump it on him all at once. Simon is just recently starting to really get it and he is 7. He's still wary of coming right out and saying Santa is not real, tho. The good thing is that the Holy Spirit will guide my child into the post-Santa phase better than even I can because He's filling my child's inherent need to believe in something with Himself!
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