It wasn't that long ago... my oldest celebrated his first birthday and thanks to the grandparents, it was like a celeb-r-a-baby bash, balloons and gifts galore, electronica, all the latest in lights and sounds and everything the most educated and well-off kiddo could ever want. At the end of the day, with his gifts surrounding him, I shot an entire roll of photos (remember film?) of him playing. But not with his new toys. And not with his old toys for that matter. No, he was inside one of the boxes that one of the new toys came in. He was singing some silly song, off tune, turning in circles and rolling about, laughing like the box was his new best friend. Cardboard. The gift of choice for the in-the-know toddler.
I should have remembered this. I should have reminded the grandparents. I should tattoo this on my arm. Flash forward just nine years and rewind the tape to watch a similar scene last Christmas.
Just four days after Christmas and we're packing for a trip to my sister's --four days spent fighting over and (with very little effort) breaking most of the new toys into the cheap plastic pieces they were. I told the boys to go grab whatever they couldn't live without and anything they wanted to show their cousins from their Christmas stash. They were back in moments, each of them with a few books and their favorite stuffed animals in tow.
"This is it?" I asked. "Nothing else?" They all confirmed their nopes and ran off to play.
Not one of their new items.
It got me thinking. And wondering if all the bickering and crankiness of the past few days wasn't related to consumption disease. We build up Christmas for over a month. We bribe them to be good. Advertisers make sure they're hyped for the biggest and best of everything under the sun. And then, the day finally comes and bam! It's gone. No matter what's under the tree, the thrill is gone in no time.
A wheel off the remote control SUV, an airplane with a now broken propellor 30-feet up a tree, a piece broken on the new game (and several more rolled out of sight), three plastic light sabers causing bruises and major malcontent.
If our house burned down... if we left for a year... if we met someone who had nothing... what one thing would my kids keep?
Sounds a little like an advent conspiracy for kids.
-- Meg Ferrante
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3 comments:
This post points to an issue I've been struggling with this year. I keep saying, "We're going to have a scaled down Christmas this year." The kids don't seem to be saying much ~ but I wonder ~ are they buying it? Am I buying it? Poo.
Starting at the beginning of this year, Scott and I started telling the kiddos that we would celebrate them on their birthdays but on Christmas, we will celebrate Jesus. It is His birthday, after all! We will start to have incredibly-scaled down Christmas celebrations compared to years' past. Inspired by Ann at Holy Experience, instead of using our money to buy each other crud-ola, we will each choose an item or animal from a charity's catalog to bless another family in Christ's name. It will be interesting to see what the kiddos think on Christmas morning!
Jamie, Amy (Amy meet Jamie... :) --
You are my mentors. I really appreciate your input. And I really am glad I wrote this down last January so I could remind myself this December. Just brainstorming here, but maybe it's a little like smoking... you have to change the ritual surrounding the habit. So instead of gathering around the tree first-thing, you make a huge fuss with the nativity (see last year for the room-at-the-inn skit or the placing of the baby Jesus) and you can make a huge fuss with the breakfast and with lighting the last advent candle (maybe place a big one in the middle of the wreath or maybe one for each kid to light?) Then there's always over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go, where the crudola will be there no matter what I do or say, so any hurt from the tiny stacks under the tree will soon be forgotten. (Amy, enlargements on sale at Walmart.com -- maybe you could blow up a few pictures of these kids around the world with their animals or gifts and that will be a tangible reminder they can unwrap Christmas morning?) Again, thanks for walking through this with me!
PS -- hope all of your kiddos are out of sick bay? Jeremy's fever lasted SIX days -- Robby is trying hard to turn his cold into more, but for the moment, we're good here. Hope the same for you both.
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