I love Christmas. I love seeing family, listening to Christmas music, the warm scent of vanilla wafting through the house when we make Christmas cookies, the soft glow of lights on the tree.
But lately I’ve started to dread Christmas.
After we had children, Greg and I started to become more and more interested in learning about health and the environment. We want Will and Andrew to live healthy, amazing lives, and we want to live environmentally responsible lives so they have a beautiful planet to grow old on.
Our enthusiasm for documentaries and continuing education has led us to become vegan, lean towards organics, reduce the amount of plastics in our home, and reduce clutter by trying to buy fewer things.
But we run into huge environmental trouble at Christmas time. The tradition of gift-giving at Christmas was one of my favorite parts of Christmas growing up, and it’s the hardest part as an adult who wants to reduce their environmental footprint. Dozens of family members who love our children and enjoy giving them gifts purchase something for them.
If we try to adhere to the organizational guidance of removing one toy for each toy that comes into our house, we’d have to donate or throw away FORTY TOYS A YEAR. How environmentally unfriendly is that? How time consuming is it to sort through and choose that many toys to remove from our home? How upsetting for children to have to lose that many toys, to feel insecurity because each new toy means something they’ve already learned to love needs to leave? But the alternative is even more frustrating: piles and piles of toys that cannot possibly be kept organized because there’s simply too many of them for every thing to have it’s place.
That’s why I’ve been trying to compile a list of gift ideas to share with family that focus on memories and experiences rather than things. I’ve had great success with this in the past; you should have heard Will after my sister took him to a model train show!
Here are some ideas I’ve come up with for this year. If you have suggestions, I’d LOVE to hear them! Please share in the comments section 🙂 I’d also love to hear about any of your favorite holiday traditions that focus on togetherness.
Non-material gift ideas:
1. Make them Fish Friends of the Month at the library (use a photo of you together!) – This is specific to our library, but check out your library and see if they have sponsors of their fish tank or story hour. Maybe they have a friends of the library program, and a relative could sign up in your child’s name and plan an outing together to the library to celebrate.
2. Give them an envelope with cash and a photo suggesting what they use the money for (picture of hot chocolate, breakfast out, etc.)
3. Buy them a museum membership (Discovery Museum in Acton, Children’s Museum, Museum of Science)
4. Give them a coupon for a special activity with you, such as cookie making or a special dinner together
5. Plan a craft to do with them and wrap up the necessary supplies to do it. See if they can guess what type of craft you’ll be making.
6. Take them out to eat, all by themselves, without their sibling! Print a photo of the restaurant from online to give to them, and maybe even a menu that you can read to them so they can get excited about where you’re going out to eat.
7. Adopt something for them and give them a photo. my.nature.org/gifts lets you adopt a rainforest, manatee, etc. to help the environment
8. Give them an i-tunes gift card so they can buy more children’s music to listen to.
9. Tickets to an event with you, such as children’s theater or music performances.
10. Photos – give them a photo of you, or you guys together, to hang in their room.
11. Teach them something. Give them a certificate for a lesson from you, and teach them how to make bread, whittle a piece of wood, plant seeds to grow indoors, or something else. Take photos to give to them after the lesson and write down what they learned so they can save it for later!
12. Children’s classes / summer camp / extra-curricular activity. Sign them up for a science workshop at a nearby museum, buy them a 6 pack of art classes, contribute to a fund for summer camp. Wrap up a photo of the camp and write down activities they’ll do and talk to them about it so they can look forward to the event.
13. Sleepover with their favorite breakfast. Plan to have them spend the night, and pick their favorite breakfast to make together. Play board games together before bed, and focus on having it be a time that’s all about being together and having fun!
14. Plan a science experiment you can do together and wrap up the ingredients and instructions. Write up a mock science article together afterwards to report your findings!
15. Something else! Plan an activity, take them somewhere, anything that emphasizes time together rather than material goods would be amazing.
Time without their parents or sibling can be extra special, or if you’re an aunt/uncle with your own kids, time that you spend with your niece/nephew when your own children aren’t there to distract you is going to be a rare and special novelty. Keep that in mind as you plan your ideas for gifting a memory instead of a toy!
Young children enjoy unwrapping things (you can use reusable cloth bags or recycled, non-glossy paper to make it more environmental) and are very visual – try wrapping up the dry ingredients for pancakes and giving it to them when you’re going to have them spend the night. Wrap up craft supplies if you’re going to do a craft together. Give them a photo with ideas for how they can spend their money if you’re giving them cash. It’ll make it easier for them to remember and look forward to the time you’re going to spend together, and remind them that they ARE receiving something! They can look at a big box of goodies and see that they have a glass jar with ingredients to make cookies with Nana, craft supplies for a fun project with their aunt and cousins, a picture of mittens because their uncle is going to take them sledding and has given them a coupon for unlimited pulls up the big hill.
Sounds like a perfect Christmas to me 🙂