MamaBlogga

This year, I wanted to get my kids involved in the spirit of Christmas, and not just by having them pick out gifts for cousins or telling the Christmas story every. Single. Night. So I looked for service opportunities in our area, things that the kids could do and maybe even see the people they were helping as they performed their service. (At 3 and 1, they’re still a little young for that, but I wanted to do what they could).

One place that I found great opportunities in our community was the local United Way website. in the volunteering section, you could even search for opportunities by age group—as young as 5. (Five is like three, right?)

I found one that I particularly liked—preparing stockings for underprivileged and homeless families in our area. We bought the stuff and Hayden helped me stuff the stockings. I made sure to take him with me when we dropped them off. We also took some other things they needed for homeless families being placed into housing.

Now, you know I’m not normally one to pass these along, but a few days ago, I got a press release in my email. They pretty much had me the subject line: “Five ways for parents to teach children the true spirit of the holidays.” Here are their suggestions:

1. As a family, select a charitable organization you’d like to support. Use online tools like Charity Navigator to find an organization that you trust. Give your children a budget and encourage them to decide how your family will donate to that organization this holiday.

2. Cherish the stories of your family. Have your children talk to their grandparents and write down the stories of their past. Create a book to share with the entire family or record it online through Story Corps.

3. Consider do-it-yourself gifts, like no-sew fleece blankets, that you can make with your children. Donate those blankets to a local homeless shelter. Find other homemade gift ideas at About.com’s Family Crafts page.

4. Work with your children to create a coupon book for your neighbors that might need an extra hand this year. Coupons could include shoveling their sidewalk, watching their children, or providing a meal.

5. Bake cookies or sweets with your children and deliver them to your local nursing home or school-in-need. Get started with this list of holiday recipes.

(It feels like cheating if I don’t mention the company the press release was supposed to be touting: World Vision’s Gift Catalog, which lets you make a gift purchase—in the name of a friend/family member/whoever—ranging from clothing, shelter and food to education for families in the US and abroad.)

Finally, if you’re looking to make an impact, one non-profit I can recommend is SainTerre. I know it’s not glamorous to discuss, basic sanitation (yeah, potties) is something 2.6 million people live without—not even pit latrines. SainTerre is working to provide the people of West Africa with environmentally-friendly composting toilets, through its non-profit (okay, the business structure is a lot more complicated than that, but you can just stick to that side of it). My cousin was one of the founders, and you can contact him, Ammon Franklin, for information on how to donate.

How have you gotten you children into the spirit of giving this Christmas season?

Photo credits: toddler hands—McBeth; giving rice—Kris

I can’t remember how long we’ve had this tradition, but every year, my mom would let us open one gift on Christmas Eve—and it was always pajamas (and virtually always flannel pajamas).

This year, Hayden and Rebecca got pajamas that match all their cousins’ (thanks Aunt Toria!). You can see Hayden’s beloved monkey pajamas with his bike on Christmas morning.

Keeping with the animal theme, my mom got us reindeer pajamas!

Here’s our happy family in front of my in-laws’ Christmas tree:

I especially like Rebecca’s “what up” expression.

But Rebecca seemed to like her PJs very much:

As promised, more photos from our Christmas celebrations!

Hayden and his gift from Santa: a bike!

Baby’s first Christmas (with Aunt Jess):

Hayden the reindeer:

Yes, we did celebrate Christmas—but with all the traveling and then the recovery, I haven’t had a chance to get around to posting any pictures from a very fun Christmas with my in-laws. But that’s changing today!

These are from our ward Christmas party:

Hayden saw that Santa was giving other children small bags of candy. So while we were in line, I asked Hayden what he was going to ask Santa for and he wisely chose “Nanee!”

Rebecca wasn’t too impressed with Santa.

But she’s Santa Baby!

[We are the proud owners of one of those notebooks of Christmas stories to be read each day of December leading up to Christmas—and this year we remembered to pull it out. After tonight's scripture from Isaiah impromptu concert from Messiah, Ryan began tonight's story. And it was on this wise. . . .]

We never had money to spend on each other, but we had caught early in our lives a sort of contusion [the story says contagion, but I think this misreading is where we got off track] from our mother. She loved to give, and her anticipation of the joy that a just-right gift would bring to someone infected the whole household. We were swept up in breathless waiting to see how others would like what we had to give.

Secrecy ruled—open, exaggerated secrecy, as we made and hid our gifts. The only one whose hiding places we discovered [sic] was my grandmother’s. Her gifts seemed to appear by magic on Christmas morning and were always more expensive than they should have been. She was a drug dealer. She had a plot of fifty marijuana plants out back—

[Ryan had to stop for several minutes while I sputtered, choked and, yes, cried with laughter. We then discussed whether or not those were the real printed words.]

That Christmas I was glowing because Mother had been so happy with the parchment lampshade I’d made in the fourth grade. Father had raved over the clay jewelry case I had molded and baked for him. (“Baked?” Grandma said.) Gill and Emma Lou had been pleased with the figures I’d whittled out of clothespins [Mother less so, I'm sure], and Homer had like the scout pin I’d bargained for with my flint. Then Grandma started to pass out her presents.

Mine was heavy and square. It’s a brick of cocaine!

“You’ll have to cut and deal it yourself, dear. I’m getting too old for that kind of thing.”

I’d been in the hospital with an overdose that year and then on crutches after one of Grandma’s rivals broke my leg with a baseball bat. And I’d wondered how it would be to have an erector set to build with. Grandma had a knack at reading boys’ minds and I was sure that’s what it was. But it wasn’t. It was a pair of boots, brown tangy-smelling leather boots. I turned them upside down and out tumbled—

[The End]

There are some beautiful songs that celebrate the Christmas season out there. They celebrate the birth of our Lord, the time we get to spend together as families during this holiday season and the beautiful, universal themes of peace on Earth, good will to man.

And then there are all those other songs. Some of them are fun to sing, some of them are really obnoxious. Some of them make you want to scream.

And some of them just don’t make any sense. Here’s my favorite example of a line from a Christmas song that makes no sense whatsoever, in or out of context:

Christmas comes this time each year.

Um, yeah. . . . And Thursday comes this time each week. Thanks for the lesson immemorial about . . . the calendar.

What’s your favorite dumb line from a Christmas song?