Updated April, 2022
Most people either love holidays or hate them. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of in between. Specifically Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate in December. They are either a time of joy or stress, abundance or lacking. Either way, they tend to be full of gifts. But then one has to wonder, can too many toys cause problems? Most importantly, is there a different way we can do holidays differently? Can we still give gifts without overwhelming ourselves and our children? Most importantly, let’s get back to celebrating what really matters in holidays: family. Because what we show our children now will affect them now and into the future.
Being the Grinch
At the risk of sounding like a Grinch myself, I’m over it. My family and I have come to an agreement that we aren’t going to do the traditional holiday anymore. There is no need to buy each other stuff. If I want to get a loved one a gift, I’m going to get it for them, regardless of what holiday is around. I don’t need an excuse to buy presents, and I don’t want an obligation either.
The worst part about Christmas is that it is built entirely around a consumerist culture. We must buy, buy, and buy more. It centers on the idea that things are what will make us happy. Our accumulation of possessions is a direct reflection of our accumulation of wealth, and of course we know that money = happiness.
Especially now that I have children, I take a lot of pause to decide what each holiday will mean for our family. Will we teach them about Santa Claus, the religious aspect of Christmas, or consumerism? What do we want the holidays to mean to them? I don’t want Christmas (or any holiday for that matter) to be about buying stuff and reinforcing a consumerist culture.
Alternatives to Gifts
As we move away from buying more and more stuff, we have started looking for different ways to celebrate. One way we have done this is with a heavy focus on spending time together (have I mentioned quality time is my love language?). Maybe we all take a vacation together for the holiday. Or one year I gave my nephew an envelope full of riddles, one for each month of the year. Then he would solve the riddle for the month, and just him and I would go do whatever activity the riddle pointed to.
Another alternative is raising money for one single large gift. I did that for both the children’s birthdays one year because they both needed new beds. Instead of asking for more toys, of which they had plenty, I asked for a small donation towards their new loft beds. It was great, and it made gift giving easy for everyone. Best of all, my children didn’t even notice or mind that there weren’t many gifts to open.
Making Your Own Traditions
If you aren’t religious, and thus many of the most common traditions may not hold the same appeal for you, you can make your own. I went through all the holidays when my oldest was around three to decide what holidays resonated with me, which ones didn’t, and how we would celebrate them moving forward. There is nothing wrong with making your own celebrations and ceremonies.
Some of My Traditions
These are examples of some of the traditions and celebrations we have decided to create. We spend this time every year honoring what works for our family. I’m not saying you have to do these, I just wanted to offer you some examples.
Birthday Tradition
We take a full week to celebrate birthdays. It starts 4 days before their actual birthday. The night before their birthday, after they have gone to bed, we inflate 100 balloons so that when they wake up the next morning, there are 100 balloons waiting for them. They get to take their day off from school and spend it with Mom. We go shopping together, where they get to pick out the number of helium balloons as they are old. We also buy one article of clothing and one toy.
Part of our birthday tradition is honoring others and celebrating the people in our lives that we love. When we go shopping, they pick someone or a cause to give back to and buy one toy for someone else. They also select 2 toys from home to donate to someone as well. And when we have cake, the very first slice of cake goes to someone they pick that they feel helped them grow the most that year.
Month of the Earth
This celebration starts with the Spring Equinox and ends with Earth Day. We talk about the earth and make sure to spend a lot of time expressing gratitude for nature. We try to take extra hikes and spend time in nature. We find one place to clean up, either through volunteering with the city or finding our own project.
During Earth Month we do our best to minimize our material possessions and try to get back to our roots. We plot out our garden and start some of our plants inside. We also go meat free for the month and try to take alternative transportation as often as possible. Finally, we look into causes centered around Earth and select one to make a donation to.
The New Year
An example of taking a common holiday and turning it into something more meaningful for your family is how we celebrate New Years. This is actually a holiday I really love. And to celebrate it beyond it being a big party and drinking, we take the week leading up to the new ear to clean the house. This means when the new year arrives, our home is clean and ready.
We also take time together and reflect. We talk about what has passed in the last year and what we hope will pass in the coming year. Then we each pick a place to travel to in the next year and select a volunteer commitment for the year.
I hope to teach my children about all sorts of holidays, what they used to mean, what they mean in this day and age, and what we want them to mean. I hope to create something meaningful with my family. Not just a pile of crap they will play with twice then relegate to the back of their closet. What will your December holiday be about this year?
