We\u2019re finally past the early-childhood years for all of our children, which means that this was the first year at which none of our children expected Santa to bring the presents.\u00a0 Which is good, because I never liked the Santa Claus game in the first place \u2014 I didn\u2019t object to Santa in principle, but I never felt comfortable with the elaborate, fictional stories.\u00a0 My kids learned about Santa from their classmates, and I didn\u2019t contradict the stories they told, but when they asked me for details, I always reversed the question:\u00a0 \u201cwhat do you<\/em> think?\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n Besides, Santa has a history of over-promising.\u00a0 Two years ago, Santa came to visit my then-preschooler\u2019s daycare (it was religiously-affiliated, so it was OK), and my son reported that he was going to get a \u201cHow It\u2019s Made\u201d book from Santa, because that\u2019s what he asked for.\u00a0 Mind you, it\u2019s a modest request, all things considered \u2014 he didn\u2019t ask for scads of toys, or a pony, but How It\u2019s Made was his favorite TV show.\u00a0 Trouble is, there was no book in print that fit the bill \u2014 or, rather, the best, and really only, choice was, and is, out of print:\u00a0 See How It\u2019s Made<\/a>\u00a0by the DK press.\u00a0 (The\u00a0link goes the\u00a0Amazon\u00a0search result, where various book resellers will offer you new or used versions.)\u00a0 We were also under a time crunch \u2014 it was a week before Christmas and we were convinced we needed to get\u00a0 this, so we ended up a homeschool curriculum provider<\/a> where this was offered, and we spent more on the rush shopping than the book itself.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Moving on from Santa means that the kids, for better or worse, understand that their dad and I are the ones selecting the presents.\u00a0 So far, the youngest is gleefully building Lego sets, and the oldest \u2014 well, he\u2019s 13, and not very expressive \u2014 but the middle one did the present tally and decided he got gypped, but was very excited today when I told him that the Nerf gun (sorry, \u201cblaster\u201d) he had his eye on was now at 50% clearance at Target, so he used some gift card money \u2014 and I bought a second one \u201cfor Papa and I\u201d which he was nearly as excited about.\u00a0 But, of course, the older they get, the harder it is to pick out presents for them.\u00a0 When my\u00a0oldest was the age my youngest is now, we just added to the playmobil collection, but we\u2019ve now got large quantities of playmobil, legos, board games, etc.\u00a0 <\/p>\n This also means that the kids, to varying degrees, are old enough to use their allowance money to buy presents for their brothers and parents \u2014 which is a fair amount of work for us, as I took my middle son to Toys R Us and, even with the \u201cChristmas bonus\u201d extra allowance, he struggled with parting with his money for the presents he had picked out.\u00a0 On the other hand, he knew he wanted to buy a book for his dad, and I took him to Half Price Books<\/a>, where a single shelf of German books made his selection easy.\u00a0 My older son struggled a bit more, but was surprisingly successful, in the end, picking out a lego set for the youngest, Stratego for the middle one, and a Breakfast Sandwich Maker<\/a> for me, which was such a huge hit with the family that we used up 1 1\/2 packages of English muffins and had to go out to the store to buy more.\u00a0 <\/p>\n So where does my family\u2019s Christmas celebration fit into the stereotypical orgy of materialism?\u00a0 I think<\/em> we\u2019re on the \u201cless materialist\u201d end of the spectrum (partly because we\u2019re less social, too).\u00a0 We don\u2019t shop for large numbers of extended family \u2014 we only sporadically shop for my parents, who are hard to buy for anyway, and my sister (who never married) gets a \u201cdonation in your honor\u201d gift, which isn\u2019t just a cop-out because it\u2019s a charity that she herself is heavily involved with.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have anyone for whom we \u201chave\u201d to buy for in that manner that you just buy anything regardless of value just to cross that person off your list.\u00a0 On the other hand, how many people really do buy for a long list of extended family, neighbors, friends and acquaintances, teachers, coaches, etc.?\u00a0 Even in our family, the presents my husband and I exchange tend to be practical \u2014 a knife block rather than a charm bracelet, for instance.<\/p>\n At the same time, I have to admit:\u00a0 I don\u2019t really know to what extent people really do recklessly spend on any number of recipients.\u00a0 According to today\u2019s Tribune, an article which I can\u2019t find online, the growth in Christmas sales isn\u2019t due to gift-buying, but due to an increase in people treating themselves, with the rationale that the sales are better this time of year and, if they don\u2019t buy this item they have their eye on, no one else will buy it for them \u2014 which I suspect is the destination of large numbers of the sale-priced clothes this time of year (at least, I don\u2019t see clothing as something too many people purchase as gifts for someone else).\u00a0 <\/p>\n And one final thought:\u00a0 can I just say that gift cards are the most useless gift ever?\u00a0 A gift certificate used to have the recipient\u2019s name on it, didn\u2019t it?\u00a0 so that you had to prove your identity and there was some security around it?\u00a0 A gift card, on the other hand, is no safer than cash \u2014 so why not just give cash, rather than giving a gift card to a store that the recipient may or may not shop at?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re finally past the early-childhood years for all of our children, which means that this was the first year at which none of our children expected Santa to bring the presents.\u00a0 Which is good, because I never liked the Santa Claus game in the first place \u2014 I didn\u2019t object to Santa in principle, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n