How to deal with not having a ton of great Christmas gifts for my kids?

December 12, 2023 12:44 PM

Looking for suggestions for dealing (emotionally & practically) with not showering my kids with amazing presents. Tips on powering through pesky "I'm destroying Christmas" feelings leading up to the day? Ideas on helping us all slow down & savor the gift opening on Xmas? Do you have Christmas Day routines, rituals, or traditions that smooth over the post-gift "now what" feeling? What other kinds of magic can I infuse into the season?

Background info:
- raised middle class Catholic, not practicing (we've got no savings or religious community or traditions)
- ADHD & having a moderately hard time with that (I struggle with routines including secular traditions)
- kids are 6 and 8
- they're getting 4 presents each (two fun, two practical) plus candy & two shared toy sets, all of which I think they'll need/enjoy/appreciate
- they'll get presents from their grandparents when we visit

In my head, I know it's plenty and financially I can't get a bunch of stuff just to have more for them to open. It's not a huge difference from years prior, either. In my heart... I really suck at doing the whole Christmas thing, so gifts feel like the last reliable bit of Christmas magic I can manage. And I'm failing at providing there too.

(I'm excruciatingly aware that we're incredibly lucky to be together, healthy, in our home, and I do know how much worse it could be.)

posted by Baethan to Human Relations (49 answers total)

Something my family did, which I feel like helps stretch things out, is opening stockings (because the excitement could not be contained!), then had a big family breakfast, then back to Santa/parents presents. My parents also made us watch each other open presents and go one at a time.

Can you plan for something that happens later in the day, even a plan to watch a Christmas movie together so that there’s something to look forward to rather than just an afternoon fizzle?
posted by raccoon409 at 12:55 PM on December 12, 2023 [27 favorites]

How about you wrap some of the presents in a challenging way? like using packing tape or zip ties, or a box-inside a box-inside a box, so that unwrapping takes some time and is as much fun as the actual present.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:57 PM on December 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

When we would give our kids a shared gift, we made a scavenger hunt out it. They LOVED it and still talk about the scavenger hunts to this day (they're 26 & 23). It doesn't have to be complicated, either, like you don't have to come up with some elaborate riddles they have to solve. Ours were sometimes as simple as "When we put away the towels, they go in this closet! That's where you'll find the next clue!" And then they'd race up to the linen closet and dig around for the clue.

It was so fun!
posted by cooker girl at 1:05 PM on December 12, 2023 [21 favorites]

This sounds like such a normal and great Christmas for two kids!

I agree with stretching out the morning by having breakfast between stockings and gifts, and by having everyone watch each person open (so, no simultaneous openings). It feels abundant and luxurious. Make some cinnamon rolls or pancakes or fancy-cheap-carbs, the kids will love it.

I also think that telling the kids the plan is good. Tell them to say before that first it’s stockings, then breakfast, then presents, and then cleanup and playtime, then lunch. Maybe have them choose a Christmas movie to watch after lunch, but then SURPRISE, they get to watch it BEFORE lunch too (if needed).

Tell them that after lunch you’ll do a family walk, and/or after dinner you’ll do a Christmas lights drive-around.
posted by samthemander at 1:07 PM on December 12, 2023 [12 favorites]

OH! I can't believe I almost forgot this, but our Christmas morning rule was that, as each kid woke up, they'd have to come into our room and we'd all end up in the bed; my husband and I would pretend to fall back to sleep and the kids would giggle and try to wake us up. We could easily get a half hour or more to laze about (and get that Christmas nervous energy out of the kids) before we'd head downstairs to open stockings.
posted by cooker girl at 1:09 PM on December 12, 2023 [7 favorites]

Taking turns, one at a time to open gifts is a nice thing that spreads out the magic. I second picking out a nice Christmas movie to watch. Have egg nog and get cozy.
posted by brookeb at 1:09 PM on December 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

My wife's family has a whole series of traditions to provide structure to the day, similar to what raccoon409 said above:

• Everybody gathers at the top of the stairs in their PJs. Nobody is allowed to go downstairs until everybody is awake and ready.
• Go downstairs and open stockings.
• There is a big plate of dried fruit and nuts, prepared the night before, that everybody can snack on while the fancy Christmas breakfast is being prepared.
• Breakfast is eaten all together. The menu is the same every year so this isn't a big production every time.
• Presents from Santa have been left in the family room by the fireplace, so everybody goes there first. Everybody (including grownups) has exactly one present from Santa. (This is still the case even now that the youngest of my wife's siblings is over 30.)
• Everybody migrates to the formal living room, where the rest of the presents have been placed under the tree.
• Turns are taken opening gifts one at a time. The youngest person there is tasked with distributing presents to each person in turn.
• After presents are done, there's a call with family members who aren't there in person.

posted by number9dream at 1:15 PM on December 12, 2023 [8 favorites]

Is outdoors an option? One year after presents, we bundled up and went to the shore for an hour or two after presents. We were the only ones there and just ran around for a while and tried to find clams (with limited success). It didn't turn into a tradition, but it was memorable.
posted by mersen at 1:17 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

FOUR presents each, PLUS candy (presumably in a stocking), PLUS TWO MORE shared toy-sets, PLUS presents from their grandparents?

This is a massive amount of presents!

Please consider that you may have the present-giving equivalent of distorted body image here.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:19 PM on December 12, 2023 [22 favorites]

A friend shared that she is starting a new tradition this year where the parents wrapped a bunch of Christmas books (most of them from the library) and put them under the tree, and in the days leading up to Christmas, the kids could choose one to unwrap and they read that book together as a family. Could do something similar in the days leading up to Christmas (library books, yay!), and then have a couple that you open together on Christmas itself?
posted by something_witty at 1:19 PM on December 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

Something we did when I was a kid in the '80s that was really fun, was for each kid to (voluntarily!) pick one of our own toys that we were willing to give and that we thought one of the other kids would like, and wrap it up and stick on one of those little "To: xx / From: yy" labels and write the name of the recipient on it.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:22 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Agreed that this is plenty of presents.

But yeah, some combo of presents-->breakfast/lunch-->family outing (outdoor walk or indoor movie)-->everyone's had enough of each other so we do our own thing (whether that's adults have some drinks while kids go play with their new toys, or everyone just goes off to do whatever on their own).

Always a good lesson to teach kids how to hang out by themselves instead of entertaining them every moment.
posted by greta simone at 1:23 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Your kids might be young for this, but one year I wrapped all the gifts in butcher paper sealed with colored tape, and on some of the packages, instead of their names, I wrote clues or riddles. One I remember was a simple math thing that added up to the age of the kid the gift was for. It could be, "the red-headed one," or something else simple for younger kids.

We always opened gifts one at a time. Anything that extends gift-opening and makes it more fun is great, and I always thought that doing it one at a time lets people enjoy other people's pleasure, and means that the gift-giver gets to see the gift they've given being opened. It staves off the "now what?" anticlimax of all the surprise and anticipation being over.
posted by Well I never at 1:27 PM on December 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Spreading out the opening of the stockings and the presents is definitely the way to go. In our family we were allowed to open the stockings before our parents got up, but then we had to wait for them to open the presents. Then we had a nice big breakfast (with egg nog!!!), but having the breakfast between stockings and presents as others have suggested would be fine, too. The advantage of post-presents breakfast is that it prolongs the festive feeling, but gives the kids a chance to work out some of the excitement individually before reconvening at the table. (Usually then we packed up and went to my grandparents' house for Giant Family Gathering, but I understand not everyone has a couple dozen cousins.)

(Maybe, at some point, you might want to tackle what it is that makes you think you "suck at the whole Christmas thing"--if you're not struggling with depression/grief, disability, or poverty, it's a pretty straightforward set of practices, plus with little kids you're free to redefine them to your preferences, and then they become "the whole Christmas thing"--but not in December.)
posted by praemunire at 1:28 PM on December 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

They are also a great age for getting lots of little cheapo gifts like stickers, fake tattoos, $1 slinky's, sticky hands, lipgloss, those tiny ceramic cats. If you want to go to the route of having more 'stuff' for them to open.
posted by greta simone at 1:35 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I also have ADHD and my perfection procrastination with Christmas is absolutely terrible. What I will tell you is that I was spoiled rotten as a kid (only grandchild on one side for over 10 years) and I can only tell you maybe 5 Christmas presents I received, ever. What I do remember is sitting in my cozy family room with my parents, playing cards, watching the dogs be silly...I feel a lot of pressure to make Christmas flawless for my daughter, and am always trying to remind myself that it truly isn't about the stuff.
posted by notjustthefish at 1:36 PM on December 12, 2023 [10 favorites]

I don't think they care as much as you do - they haven't had that many Christmases or seen much in the way of Christmas Morning Propaganda (certainly less than I think I did as an 80s kid). And certainly from an adult perspective it's the traditions and special activities that stick with you.

Like raccoon409 said we had pre-breakfast and post-breakfast rounds of gift-opening, and then elevenses (firm tradition of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, from the can), then usually some chill playtime and adult naptimes.

My mom made it cleverly easy to feed everyone on the day. We had our Fancy Meal for Christmas Eve dinner, she'd preassemble a breakfast strata while we did dishes, to put in the oven the next morning during pre-breakfast openings. Canned cinnamon rolls for elevenses (I do still make Christmas Day Cinnamon Rolls, but some years I'm fancy and it's Alton Brown's recipe. Other years it's canned still.), and then a giant Party Size Stouffer's Lasagna that would come out of the oven around 3-4pm and you eat when you want, plus there's candy and at least 3 kinds of baked good around, so Grazing Time tended to last from like 4-8pm, during which there was usually some kind of movie we'd watch, often with mom and whoever was interested also working on a puzzle in the corner of the room.

I don't think it needs to be significantly more expensive, it's about the time spent together especially when a lot of things are closed and you stick around home and be a bit lazy. My family was a little small for this to be practical, but my friends in bigger families always got a "family gift" to do as an activity - a puzzle, game, movie to watch, craft set, etc. Find stuff to do together, rather than making it more present-oriented.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:11 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

We've never gotten huge presents for our kids at Christmas. Maybe something along the line of a video game. My spouse and I both have December birthdays and we'll get each other bigger presents for the birthday and then more practical ones for Christmas. More than anything else, because that's the one time of year where I'll reliably have a lot of time off work we'll do things like baking together or winter activities like ice skating, snowman building, or tobogganing (if there's snow).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:19 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

When I remember Christmas as a kid, aside from a handful of particularly memorable gifts (not all of which were mine, it was fun to see others' reactions, too) it's not the presents that really stick with me. It's pulling out the decorations and trimming the tree and making cookies with my family. Maybe you're not into that stuff, and that's fine! But if there is something special you can do in the lead-up to the holiday, even something that's not necessarily traditionally Christmas-y, that you can enjoy doing with your kids, you'll be making the holiday season special and taking some pressure off yourself on the actual day.

Definitely give yourself a big break on the presents, you're doing absolutely fine on that front. Your kids will remember things you do with them far longer than the presents.
posted by EvaDestruction at 2:22 PM on December 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

+1 to the scavenger hunt. My parents did this one year for a present that was too big to wrap, but it would have been fun regardless of the size of the gift. Maybe a scavenger hunt to each kid's pile of presents. Then they have to bring them in to the area where you'll be unwrapping.
posted by hydra77 at 2:30 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Disguise the gifts. My parents started doing this when I was a kid because I was amazingly good at guessing what all the presents under the tree were. So inside the box is not just a toy, but also a 2lb sack of rice and a glass jar full of pennies to confuse when shaking. My kids have loved this. And then next year, or birthday, when they know there’s disguises they can have fun trying to figure it out. “It’s clothes and two matchbox cars in a paper towel tube!” More exciting than just pants.
posted by ixipkcams at 2:33 PM on December 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Give the gift of your time. Seriously if the kids are disappointed in their gifts they will be disappointed whatever you give them because the only thing that would make them happy would be a Ferrari, the latest Grand Theft Auto release and Taylor Swift herself to drive the Ferrari, or some other pipe dream sort of longing.

So make the day memorably fun and cosy in a low key way so nobody gets exhausted and over excited. Join the kids in doing activities such as playing their new games with them, invite them to help you do stuff in the kitchen like arrange the charcuterie board, sing carols together, watch a Christmas movie together while cuddling, take them out for a run in the cold fresh air.

Just don't take over so that you hog the new Lego, or win at CandyLand, nor make them follow too many instructions when they do the construction paper crafts or set up the charcuterie board (decorate the gingerbread men, set the table or whatever). The kids should get to create blobby awful gingerbread men, or make a mess of the charcuterie board so that they don't remember that they did it all wrong.

If they get clothes, get them to put them on and take pictures. If they get books have a book reading session. If they don't get books, pick up some from the library and bring 'em out on Christmas day and have a session reading the Christmas themed books, with the adults possibly reading out loud.

Your kids probably don't remember what they got, if they got fifteen presents each last year - that's the thing about being lavish. The law of diminishing returns means that the more gifts you get the less you appreciate each individual one. You are taking steps now to turn your family Christmas into one where the kids will remember it as a fun, loving time, rather than an orgy of excessive possessions and parents stressed by debt.

If your kids complain that they wanted more and better presents, agree with them - "Wouldn't that have been fun! If we were super rich we could have taken you to Switzerland for a skiing vacation!" Run with their fantasy of abundance, but make sure they understand it as an unrealistic fantasy. "Imagine a bathtub filled with Christmas candy! Cool. Of course it would cost a few hundred dollars and we'd end up throwing it out, stale, cos there would be too much to eat, but it is a fun idea!" Kids that age may not have realistic expectations, so the trick is to not tell them they are being unrealistic, but let them understand that that kind of stuff is mental play, like magically getting to be inside a video game. You want to burst their bubble gently, not scold them about being poor and Mom and Dad not being able to afford it.


Using the gifts you get is often the best way to deal with the "Is that all?" let down. Properly chosen gifts can fill happy hours on the day itself.
posted by Jane the Brown at 2:38 PM on December 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

My son doesn't remember specific gifts, remembers events when visiting family. Most of all, even in his 30s, he loves that we read Polar Express together every Christmas; we have done this when he was in a combat zone, and when we were having problems with each other. I put a bell in his stocking one year. Books allow for snuggling with kids. I get misty at the same place in the book every year. Choose a book, song or whatever tradition, but that's what kids remember the most. Take a walk together, go look at Christmas lights, make a gingerbread house.

We made gingerbread houses a few years when he was young, he remembers them as magic, I remember singed gingerbread, but it was fun.

I think we'll also watch Die Hard this Christmas Eve, it's a good intersection of interests for us.

I remember Christmas with beautiful decorations, family photos and seething stress leading to alcohol-fueled blowouts at the Christmas dinner table. You're doing fine. They want and need your attention and love more than anything.
posted by theora55 at 2:42 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Pick a film to watch annually (The Muppet Christmas Carol!!) or maybe rotate who gets to pick that year's movie (with veto power by parents perhaps).

Have a favorite dish that is made every holiday. This could be sweet or savory, for example, we make deep fried dumplings and all the kids are obligated to pitch in. The oldest is now in high school but this started when the youngest was 3 and their participation was more of an aspirational idea than actual help. We did fry some of the most fancifully folded ones and they adored eating those.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:43 PM on December 12, 2023

Oh jeez, yeah we have LOTS of not-Christmas-Day-but-Christmas-season traditions. We watch Elf, Die Hard, and The Ref (your kiddos are probably too young for those last two, but one day!) at some point before Christmas. On Christmas Eve Day, we go ice skating at a local rink that has public skate for like three hours that day. Then we get Chinese takeout and watch A Christmas Story together.

After Thanksgiving, we'd go to Krohn Conservatory to take Christmas photos; we have a photo every year from the time our youngest was two up til this year (they're 26 & 23 now!) in the same place. It's a lovely tradition and they LOVE it. The key is to make it super low stakes. Either we get a really good photo or a terrible one; either way, it's fine! The purpose is the marking of years and going through all the plant rooms together.

And we also cut down a Christmas tree together. This year was the first since the birth of our eldest that they weren't able to go with us, but it was fine. We have the memories!
posted by cooker girl at 2:53 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think you're overthinking it. When I was a kid we didn't have much money and my mother was glum, angry and guilty about Christmas, which sapped the fun right out of it. I liked presents but I wanted to have a nice time more than anything, and I wanted my parent to have a good time, too. I think if you try to be positive and upbeat it will make a big difference for your kids (and you). Make a great breakfast, do something fun and a little different than your usual (puzzles? sledding? crafts?). Christmas is about family and love. Presents are secondary.
posted by Stoof at 2:54 PM on December 12, 2023 [9 favorites]

My parents used to do something they called the "Christmas Trail" which was a trail of tiny plastic toys or other small tidbits that hinted at the contents of one of my presents, leading from my room to the living room (or wherever the family was going to gather in the morning). This trail would "magically appear" at some point after I went to bed on Christmas eve. I don't imagine this cost very much but added significantly to the "Christmas magic" in my mind for whatever reason.
posted by space snail at 3:18 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

We recently (at my daughter's suggestion!) imported a tradition we had from birthdays to Christmas, that we all find makes the present component of the day feel much better. It works like this: you spread the present opening over the course of the entire day, sort of like serving a meal with many courses -- but with plenty of activities in between. So with your set of presents we would do something like:

Candy before breakfast. If that's stockings, the stockings get brought up to parents' bed and opened there.

Breakfast.

Present opening I: Putter around, get gathered by the tree. Choose a present for everyone to open. Open it! Maybe even TWO presents (one of the fun, one of the practical). Take turns, admire each present individually.

Play with presents. Do other fun things. Lunch.

Present opening II: A shared play set. If adults have more presents to open, they can open up to one each now too.

Play with presents. Do an additional planned activity (making cookies or something).

Present opening III: Let's do one fun and one practical again. Take turns! If adults have more presents to open, they can have something now too.

Play with presents! Have a snack. Go for a walk. Etc.

Present opening IV: The final play set could be opened before dinner or after dinner, depending on what feels right.

Christmas dinner!

Obviously you could mix this up however you like but we find the basic approach SO much nicer than opening everything in the morning. The presents don't feel overwhelming, there isn't so much letdown, the whole day is both presents and not-presents.
posted by redfoxtail at 3:33 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

I like so many of these suggestions, especially
- don't worry you're doing great on gifts
- take a walk
- tell kids the plan

I'd like to add, when my kids were little, baking sugar cookies was super fun group activity. Maybe for the afternoon? They're super simple and hard to ruin. Protip, don't overcook; they should be soft when ya take them out. They harden sufficiently as they cool.

Also, boardgame that night? Something ez like trouble or chutes and ladders.

Merry merry!
posted by j_curiouser at 3:39 PM on December 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

One year we (the kids) made our own ornaments out of oven-bake Femo clay, with different colours and on some of them we glued glitter after they were baked. They each had a little hole to put a loop of yarn through for hanging. They wrere wacky creative things, like a pencil and other random objects. It was super fun using the ornaments that we had made year after year. We also made paper chains out of coloured craft paper and glue-stick. It's the fun of making the stuff together that was the real treat.
posted by heatherlogan at 3:39 PM on December 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

and, read the night before christmas and santa calls on Xmas eve.
posted by j_curiouser at 4:15 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

I really don't remember gifts from my childhood--handful of things, if I put my mind to it, you know, got a copy of the Beatles' White Album one year, got a desk one year, got Nintendo games here and there but don't recall which ones. If pressed I probably could not name ten things Santa brought me from 1982 to 1999. What I can recall is the traditions--what traditions were, when they started, traditions that ended, things I'd hoped would become traditions but didn't, and so on.

But so for example, I recall that I enjoyed the idea of going to midnight Mass, and was always disappointed that it only happened once. I recall that every year, we went to Mass, went right from the church to one specific pizza restaurant, went home and opened sibling gifts, our father read us "The Night Before Christmas" in whatever evolving configuration worked out on the family couch as we all grew up and got big, and eventually with grandchildren in the mix, woke up in the morning and opened other gifts.

In a lot of ways my family disintegrated after a certain point, and those Christmas traditions anchor my memory of what was good about my family. I'm not in the city of my raising too often these days, but whenever I drive by our Christmas pizza restaurant I tear up a little because I do recall that there was an intact family of mine sitting in the same corner table every year for a very long time.

On the flipside of the coin, Christmas was a reminder of what often went wrong in my family--every year from pre-adolescence on, some kind of fight with my mother about not liking gifts she knew we wouldn't want, guilt trips for requests to return clothing that didn't fit or was too mortifying to wear in public, out-and-out yelling fights in public at the mall.

Anyway, you get the gist. Make good traditions that allow your children to feel loved and to attach positive memories to family holidays across the long stretch of time. We really carry these things for as long as we live. To the extent gifts are involved, make them quality in their intention and execution, rather than just some kind of wacky projection of what you wish your kids wanted. (Not to imply this is what you're doing, just reflecting on my own takeaways.)

Seconding everyone who said your actual amount of gifts sounds basically standard. I'd also suggest trying to just accept that the "post gift 'what now' feeling" is just inherently part of how we now celebrate this holiday. It's weird to get a bunch of stuff you want all at once--oddly unnatural, and kind of hard to process or integrate into your life. "What now" is the most organic response to it. It's not a bad thing--it just is.

One other thing I think could be nice is doing some kind of work in the community around the holiday. Lots of opportunities to volunteer at food banks and so on.
posted by kensington314 at 4:51 PM on December 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

It might be nice to work with each of the kids individually to make a present for their sibling to unwrap xmas morning. Or maybe even help them make gifts the parents. This emphasizes the giving element.
posted by jcworth at 5:26 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

The day before, make ornaments or cut snowflakes or string cranberries. Go to Midnight mass. I'm not religious, but it's still a beautiful thing to see and hear.

Agreeing with everyone to go for a walk after eating. We would walk down our rural road and pick up the garbage--big dose of satisfaction in doing that. Walking or riding to another neighborhood to see Christmas lights would make it festive. Sing carols. Give, and play a game or do a puzzle. An inexpensive 500 piece, even if it's from the thrift store finishes fast and makes for an afternoon's amusement. Make bets on whether there's a piece missing--loser does dishes. Then donate the puzzle back. Talk about past Christmases. What was the best gift? Best meal? Favorite thing you did together? What can you plan together for next year that they'd like to do? Some folks like to eat out as a special Very Formal Treat the night before or Christmas day. In some larger cities you can go to the movies. Build a snowman or sled or do a snowball fight, if you have the white stuff.

We did a "thing" a couple times when the g-kids were young where we wrapped little trinkets, small wrapped hard candies, ten dollars worth of dimes, quarters, 50 cent, and dollar coins, scratch cards, and various other small things into a huge ball by using four rolls of plastic wrap from the dollar store. You have one minute to unroll and keep whatever you find. Make it hard by smoothing down the layers hard, and wrapping the ball four or five times then cutting the plastic wrap so there's another end to find. It was tough enough to find the end to unwrap, that we added another rule that if you didn't get anything, you got another thirty seconds added next time. If you got more than five things, you were deducted thirty seconds. It's really cheesy, but even the cynical adults were laughing.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:37 PM on December 12, 2023

-Christmas concerts!
-Volunteering.
-Museums (maybe you can find one that offers local residents free admissions on a certain week day).
-There are usually free holiday themed events in your area’s source for local events.
-Mommy Poppins will have kid friendly events (no specific link since I don’t want to dox you).
-Have the kids/family record a video wishing extended family members a happy holiday.
-Have the kids make/ draw something for grandparents.
-Maybe the kids can choose something the family can do together (given parental parameters)
-Record a video of the family sharing wishes and hopes for the new year.


(A gentle suggestion… double check that the gifts don’t require anything else (e.g batteries))
posted by oceano at 5:42 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Your Christmas already sounds wonderful!! The amount of gifts and types of gifts sound perfect. Please don't worry about your kids comparing their gifts to others because 1) their Christmas will probably be better than most kids' and 2) while perhaps some gifts like a new car might may some jealous later as teens, younger kids tend to be impressed by random family togetherness things like "Oh wow, your family got to drink hot cocoa after walking/driving around lights and you brought your dog in the car too!"

The gift of choice is great too: they can each or together choose a favorite movie to watch the day of or night before (unrelated to the holiday is ok!), they can each or together choose a special snack to make, etc. This is how traditions start, a mixture out of intentional and chill.

Encouraging service or generosity is cool, too, like they go through their belongings and choose three things to wash and donate (clothing, toys, etc.) You could share baked goods with neighbors (if appropriate and possible in your neighborhood and not too stressful!)

Going to a Christmas service at church could be fun but only if, of course, you would feel comfortable and you give your kids the choice to go. They can always choose not to go next year but it can feel special.

The celebration of family is so good too! I think of a 12yo student who showed me the bracelet his uncle got him in El Salvador. Apparently, his uncle got home at midnight and the family went to the airport to pick him up, and then he was given the bracelet right away while they ate a late dinner together with extended family. It wasn't anything fancy but it was cool and meaningful because everyone was included!! I told the student, "Wow, that's so cool! I bet you're his favorite nephew!!" And he, being honest, paused and said "Well, I don't know. I am his only nephew." "It sounds to me like you're DEFINITELY his favorite nephew then!" and we both smiled. As an aunt who lives to travel with exactly one nephew, I found it extra heartwarming. The experience was special for him because it involved family being thoughtful and together, and a situation that was a little different than usual. A happy Christmas is like that for most kids: it's less about the particular gifts and more about the overall vibe. I hope you can enjoy the holiday and not stress so much. You've got this!!
posted by smorgasbord at 5:47 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I agree with a lot of the above, especially spacing out gifts and having a few low-key other traditions. You’re well in line with what my kids got/get. We also make an ornament each for next year’s tree, watch a movie, walk around the neighborhood, and eat the same meals (our breakfast tradition is American sausage patties and French toast with fruit, but also Santa brings extremely sugared cereal, like Froot Loops — this one fact convinced my kids Santa wasn’t me for quite a while — and they eat that too.)

You’re doing great.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:53 PM on December 12, 2023

Thank you for asking this question. It’s a variation of something I’ve asked myself. Don’t beat yourself up about not being good at Christmas (I’m not agreeing that you’re not good at Christmas, just using your words). I feel like a lot of people compare themselves to others around Christmas and that’s not helpful or productive.

Some more personal things you can do to make Christmas special, if you’re feeling it:
- my mom wrote letters to us in the front pages of special books. I have one of them and it’s very special to me. If you don’t want to write in a book, maybe write a thoughtful card for each kid that they can reread when they’re older.
- have them make ornaments and put the year on the ornament. Some parents have said they get their kid a special ornament each year with the idea that someday, they can give the kid a collection of those ornaments when the kid has their own Christmas tree.
- a friend and her husband go to a bookstore on Christmas Eve, buy a new book and read it Christmas Day.
- give the kids choices if you can. “Do you want to go for a walk here or here?” “Which relative do you want to call first?”

It sounds like you’re doing fine. Hang in there.
posted by kat518 at 6:49 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

I love all these ideas and these sound like the perfect Xmas celebrations! I’ll echo the person who said get library books. We do that every Xmas eve when we are home. We get a bunch of books from the library for each other and then we actually do the whole pile after dinner on Xmas Eve and have tea and hang out in our PJs while perusing “our” new books. Then a few weeks after Xmas, they all go back. Maybe rechecking out one or two.
posted by amanda at 7:13 PM on December 12, 2023

I love a lot of the ideas here. I will add a couple of our things as I too usually feel like ok, what now? I usually have a low stakes craft thing planned. Kids have in the past enjoyed putting peanut butter on pine cones and then rolling in birdseed and decorating a tree outside for the birds. Stringing cranberries and adding the resulting garland to the tree. Making pomanders - sticking cloves into oranges and then hanging up with ribbon. They smell nice and you can make a design with the cloves. Also, just cutting out snowflakes of plain paper and hanging them by thread from various doorways.

Another way we've beaten the post present blues is by inviting people over for lunch, dinner or afternoon snack. Need to be strategic about who you invite. Ideally someone the kids like, or someone that comes with kids. But not too many people that fixing food becomes a chore. I've had great success with rallying the troops to clean up presents and help me set a table for the company. Festive nachos are my jam for this. You can find red and green tortilla chips and then whatever toppings you like. For table settings it's fun to roll out a length of brown paper and have kids draw on it to decorate. Like they can write names at the top of plates (which can be paper) and draw a little something next to the cups. Kids wil play and adults can chill and watch a Christmas movie. Usually I have planned with the adults like hey, Christmas afternoons can be weird want to hangout for a bit.

Kids can also use some of the downtime to write thank you notes. Or just draw/decorate for future thank you cards. We write thank you cards to anyone not in our immediate house that gives kids a present. So grandparents, uncle, etc.

For all the people that say they don't remember presents (and I am definitely right there too) I bought one of those cheap plastic ornament balls that opens and each person has one and we write the year and favorite present. We just started doing this so our balls only have a couple of slips of paper in them but theoretically in the future we'll be able to dump out the balls and look back over the years. If you don't want to commemorate gifts you could say one thing you are thankful for, or one cool thing that happened that year.
posted by MadMadam at 9:00 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Clicked thinking I’d be reassuring you that getting underwear and one book or toy for Christmas was not the end of the world for me in some of my family’s leaner years, and that the family time, food, and experiences were more important. Another voice here for it sounds like you’re doing just fine.

My mother feels lots of anxiety around making Christmas perfect (some years more than others), but as kids we didn’t have so many preconceptions of what the day was “supposed” to be, so the better holidays were the ones where we got to help make a new family tradition. For a while, we even switched to celebrating Winter Solstice instead of Christmas, which seemed to help my mother free herself of some of the pressure she felt around organizing the holiday or gift-giving. (It helped in making that switch that we weren’t Christian, though culturally my parents were raised as such - my mother especially, my father in the default but church more just for holidays and special occasions sense. Unfortunately, we live at a greater distance now, and work schedules privilege Christian holidays/make celebrating Solstice instead infeasible these days.)
posted by eviemath at 9:19 PM on December 12, 2023

Looking for suggestions for dealing (emotionally & practically) with not showering my kids with amazing presents.

Christmas, even if you are a Santa-believing household, is not about presents. You have to absolutely internalise that and try to believe it with all your heart. For me, Christmas is about tradition, food, decoration, time off work, movies, sentimentality, family, and also gifts. But those other things matter more. If it was just about receiving things, we wouldn't have Santa, we wouldn't wrap things up, we wouldn't have a tree, we wouldn't have songs and stories and movies, we wouldn't have a vast array of traditional foods, we wouldn't do things together. I'm sure you'll have a different answer but you have to know that Christmas is really not about the gifts.
posted by plonkee at 4:19 AM on December 13, 2023

I come from a similar cultural background; one thing that may help is to remember that our expectations around what Christmas could/should be come from a time specifically of when cheap toys had just started hitting, so it was much easier to make a big Christmas than it is these days. I’ve been agonizing about this too for my partner’s kids - everything is so expensive!

Seconding the idea to do things like midnight mass, watching a Christmas movie together. That stuff will be what lasts. My now-20-year old when queried about what was important for Christmas said that she didn’t care what we did or what she got so long as we watched White Christmas on the morning of, and went to midnight mass together. Reader, she is an *atheist* but the tradition of it all has stuck.

We also take turns opening presents, parent child parent child and then do the cycle again. It spaces everything out.
posted by corb at 6:09 AM on December 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

If your house isn’t NOT an open floor plan, you may be able to put wrapping paper all over the open doorway (the night before, so Santa has his privacy) and then the kids can tear through it like they’re a football team taking the field. I don’t know that this stretches the day out at all but we found it fun for both adults and children alike.
posted by raccoon409 at 11:13 AM on December 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just want to echo that I was an only child who definitely was a little spoiled for Christmas and my favorite memories are STILL the experiences over the stuff. We used to always drive around on Christmas Eve in That One Neighborhood where everyone got really extra with the lights. I had a story-a-day-until-Christmas book that we'd read from. My mom taped a bunch of cartoon specials off of TV in 1991 that I had to rewatch every single year, to the point where she had it copied to a DVD when I was in college and I STILL watch it because even though I could stream those specials it's not the same without the 1991 commercials. My family likes to get each other the biggest, gaudiest, most ridiculous pop-up cards we can, and it's always been fun opening them one at a time and remarking on how over the top they are. We usually would get up and do stockings, and then have breakfast, and then come back and everyone took turns opening presents so that we could admire and be grateful. Lunch varied from year to year and was usually premade from the grocery store, but afterwards we'd usually settle into our separate spots to be quiet and do our own things for the rest of the day.

My partner and I are still figuring out what we want our family traditions to be and this year is hard because we have a toddler in daycare and are perpetually ill and tired. But in past years things we've done that I'd like to continue into the future are a homemade/self-filled Advent calendar, going either to see the light display at the botanical garden or just walking around the neighborhood, getting fried chicken and cake for Christmas Eve (we picked that up on a holiday trip to Japan and it's stuck), sending holiday cards and hanging all the ones we get on a garland over the entryway, and even if we don't have a tree, sticking a string of twinkly lights up somewhere. And, obviously, my 1991 TV specials.

Hopefully this onslaught has convinced you that you're NOT doing anything to feel guilty about. Even if you don't pick up a single idea from these comments, I am sure that little traditions are already trickling their way into your home and that's what your kids are going to remember as adults.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 2:00 PM on December 13, 2023

Four presents each, plus extras from grandparents, sounds like plenty to me. Money was very tight when I was a kid, and that would have been a pretty spectacular Christmas to me. Even so, thinking back on Christmas morning memories, I really don't remember what I received or how much. What I do remember is hot cocoa with marshmallows, snuggled up on the couch, listening to John Denver & The Muppets: A Christmas Together on vinyl, toasting s'mores in the fireplace, and putting milk and cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve (and a carrot for Rudolph!) and seeing them magically be gone on Christmas morning. Decorating the tree together, baking cookies with mom, falling asleep watching a Christmas special and getting carried off to bed. Those are the memories I love and cherish.

You're doing fine; please resist the impulse to compare the number of presents, dollars spent, or any other measure, against what someone posts on social media. I promise you, it's the love that goes into making the memories that the kids will remember.
posted by xedrik at 2:27 PM on December 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: holy shnikies, I cannot say thank you to you all enough! Every response has been so helpful! I can't even begin to say properly how awesome & kind you all have been.

I'm actually looking forward to Christmas, thanks to your reassurances, and your suggestions about structuring the day! I'm definitely setting up a treasure hunt for the shared gifts, they'll LOVE that!

Prioritization is really hard with ADHD; hearing from many people that time spent together is so memorable & beloved is super helpful with recalibrating my broken ability to task sort. I'm already more present (har) for my children during this time.

If you've posted anything in this thread, please know I've read your words a bare minimum of four times. You've given me a beautiful, priceless gift. Thank you!
posted by Baethan at 7:36 PM on December 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

There's been a trend over the years of doing it this way:
Something you want
Something you need
Something to wear
Something to read

And yours fits right into the same "quantity" range, so it's not at all unusual.

(I've also seen do/experience, and share, added to that list. My "family" gifts fit the share, but I rarely had the funds for experience gifts for each of them. Instead, I purchased things like zoo or science museum memberships after I got taxes back.)

As for how to draw things out:
I've always been low-income, and almost always a single parent, and since I had four kids, I made a conscious choice to focus on gifts/toy acquisition with the thought that the toys would LAST.

So... cheaply made fad toys were a no, things like building sets (legos to lincoln logs and many more) were a yes. Video games that were multi-player or sharable (Mario Party, Pokemon (in pairs) were a yes. Longevity was a major consideration. Was it something they'd play with for a week, or possibly something they'd still be using in a year or two?

Of course, there was some flexibility and individualization with it, especially as they got into their teen years (mine are all two to two-and-a-half years apart), but that was the general idea.

And on Christmas Day? I have zero patience for either the "wake up parents at dawn or before, tear open every present immediately, spread the pieces all over the house, and decide I'm bored by noon" sort of nonsense.

Instead, it was made clear from the time they were small that it was a rare (hopefully extra) day off work for mom, she'd better not get woke up extra early. And then we're doing breakfast. Leisurely. It's ok to visually examine the gifts, but we don't move them or open them early. And chances are it's already nearly noon by the time we get around to opening them. At the earliest, ten.

And then opening all the packaging at once is a hard NO. If it was something that was going to need storage, I'd plan for that ahead of time. (I'm very fond of containers to organize and reduce the "every toy we own on the floor at once" problem.) And any garbage needs put away right away, otherwise it's a disaster and pieces of toys get misplaced.

Chances are, we were headed out to a family member's house for dinner at 3 or 4, and since they'd have gifts to open there, too, it was rare that gifts from home went along for the visit. If we weren't going anywhere, the day tended to consist of dinner with a bit too many snacks and desserts, holiday movies and music, and whatever the year's new "everybody" board game and/or video game was.

It worked pretty well. Despite my kids knowing logically that we were "poor", they didn't feel poor. That surprised me, when I learned it, and made me realize that my tactics must've worked out ok.
posted by stormyteal at 7:45 PM on December 13, 2023

+1 on thank you for asking this. I think it's important to reflect on the meta plan and what kind of signals that sends your kids. You're doing a great job.

Over the course of my childhood, my mom got increasingly into having lots and lots of presents for everyone (because it has to be at least as many as last year!). By the time I was a pre-teen, I felt like she cared more about quantity than quality and it always hurt my feelings to open yet another "filler" gift. I'd have rather gotten one thoroughly-considered gift than 6 fine-but-not-personal gifts.

I think the want/need/wear/read concept stormyteal mentions (I have friends who do this with their families and love it) is great, and it also makes it easy to manage expectations with the kids.
posted by katieinshoes at 6:59 AM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]