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Merry Christmas! Yes, I am a week late. No I am not sorry. We run on a different schedule here – rarely on time and always a little frantic. What did we do for Christmas? Honestly – almost nothing, and I love it that way.
We do not:
- Travel
- Host
- Shower our children with gifts
- Spend the day cooking an elaborate meal our picky eaters won’t touch
We do:
- Stay home
- Enjoy our immediate family
- Movie night
- Stockings
- Spaghetti
The first thing about our way of celebrating the holidays that people ALWAYS seem to struggle with is that we don’t do gifts. Why? When Annabelle was 3 she told her daddy and me that she was SO excited for Christmas. We asked her why and her response was “because everyone is going to give me presents!”. We asked her if that was what Christmas was about, to which her response was a simple, “yes”. Time out. We realized in that moment that we had failed to relay the importance of the day and why it is celebrated. That is NOT what Christmas is about. Not in this house. We decided that year – no gifts. Our kids do not need for anything and are left with very few wants to be honest. We buy things throughout the year as our kids interests peak, so there isn’t much to frantically stock up on come December.
If they are wanting a bike – we buy it in spring.
If they are needing new art supplies – we put them on the Target list.
More than that we both hate the day of gluttony and stress we have seen the day become. I see it daily on social media for 2 months leading up to December 25. It honestly just makes me sad for these families. The stress of the perfect gifts, perfect meal, perfect pictures, etc just seems to eat at these poor parents will to go on.
That being said, I do still like to make the day and season stand out from the others. This year we bought the Fisher Price Little Peoples Nativity. I set it up with the kids, explained the pieces and their roles in the story. Then we read The Berenstain Bears First Christmas Book. Naturally, our other Little People pieces made their way into the nativity set up. I mean, maybe the kids are onto something. I am sure Mary would have appreciated having the convertible with a travel trailer to take on the road vs a donkey. That trip to Egypt would have been much easier.
Christmas eve is movie night! This year Disney+ was kind enough to release Encanto on December 24! Daddy made cookies, I popped the popcorn, and all the kids wore the new jammies I had finally finished sewing. Don’t they look adorable?
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We often do a lot of baking. This year my husband found a new cookie recipe that we all think is pretty darn delicious. The recipe is for loft house cookies and comes from another dad of twins! We figured out after the first batch to use the mini cookie cutters for follow up batches. The kids will happily eat either but it is a lot easier to justify giving them 6 mini cookies than 6 regular ones. If you would like to try the recipe you can click here.
We do stockings! I try to find some fun – out of the norm – things to keep them busy so we can rest, bake, and go about our day with minimal yelling and complaints of being “bored”. This year a big hit was playdoh mats. I went with the ones that tell you which emotion to make on the empty face you are given. Annabelle caught on right away, Hayden had fun just doing his own thing.
For dinner we do spaghetti. Sometimes it’s homemade, and sometimes it’s from a box. Whatever the origin it is delicious and loved by all! These are the things we have implemented to make the day special and low stress so it can be enjoyed by all. Does that make it right for everyone? Nope. It is right for us at this point of our lives though. Merry Christmas to all.