....my wife is driving me nuts over this...holy smokes, get a grip will ya!!! Every day if it's not this or that....taking the real spirit out of me here...
Who else is among some of my misery here? This place has this and I want to get the kids that and this and that, blah, blah, blah and I need to wrap and this and that....HELP!
My "kids" are teens (one in college..one in high school) so I limit the christmas spending to $50 each. Left to her own, the spouse would buy them everything they wanted. My point is, we do and buy for them all year so why do we need to go out and buy - buy - buy just because everybody else is caught up in the game.
About 10 years ago I capped the spending to $100 each for christmas..just rolled it back to $50 this year.
My wife doesn't know how to manage all this (no fault of hers, some people are managers and some not, I happen to be one) and gets frustrated, I have put management to the task so we can be as fair to each of them. Last year my son (4 at the time) didn't have as many presents to open as the oldest and it broke our hearts to see that he kept looking for his name on packages...he only had two less I believe. We spent about the same on both of them. This year we're targeting same amount spent and number of items to open...the smallest isn't old enough to know the difference and will be getting her fair share.
How do you do it on $50.00 each?...IMO that hardly gets them much. $50.00 doesn't get much in the toys area these days...we have an 8, 5 and 2 year old.
Well, I don't do christmas shopping so I don't worry about how it gets spent and who gets what...the spouse worries about that.
It's not that I don't like christmas. I just think the kids get what they need all year so why spend a lot at christmas? And I usually take a vacation in december so they are all caught up in planning that event and the hype surrounding the trip.
Tougher when you have little ones but I still believe that setting a reasonable limit per child is always a good idea. We tend to think about each purchase more when we know there is a finite amount available to spend.
Nah I really don't care. Frankly this Christmas I can't think of a thing I want that I don't already have OR it's way too expensive (i.e. an iPod or an XBox 360). I won't say I wouldn't care if I got nothing this Christmas, but I'm making it hard on my parents because now they have no idea what to get me at all.
Actually I'm thinking a CD player for my car and I'd be good. Possibly a few golf-related things as well (a new driver, perhaps?)
Gotcha, I'm sure it's a real rush, I take it you guys are without kids yet? Get some kids, then the date of start will be pushed earlier, I'd bet a beer on that one...(smiling and grinning).
My wife has always done virtually all of the shopping for our kids (girl-18, boy-14). I usually pick up a thing or 2 that she missed and I do the wrapping. Enjoy it while they're young. I miss the days of being awakened at dawn by their whispers as they looked over all of the wrapped gifts under the tree. It just isn't as much fun as they get older. WE usually have to get THEM out of bed now. One thing that I don't miss about those days is tripping over mangled and broken pieces of their Christmas toys before I even get the bills for them.
LOL...I know what you mean I was thinking about that as I was walking into work this morning after parking my car....my little guy Nathan (5 yrs old) wants a Terrain Twister so bad...and he talks about it, and asks how many more days to X-mas...I do appreciate these times in those ways....
Man, I wish that I had been able to follow what I knew was the right thing to do: Just say, "No!" to the commercialization and materialism of Christmas.
But...one little gift leads to another and another and another, and by the time you're 40 years down the line, the whole holiday is out of control and the gift list is outrageous and the expectations nearly unfulfillable. We all conform to avoid being family and social outcasts, and it drives us crazier every year.
Oh, Bah Humbug!!! What a bunch of Scrooges on here. My family went 30 years without a child being born and in the past five years, has been presented with 3 girls and 2 boys, some of whom are my Dad's grands and some great-grands!
These kiddies belong to all of the adults, Dad, myself & 4 siblings, and 3 grown grands and all their spouses. Any one of them is as content with any adult family member as with their own parents and we adults enjoy the gift thing at least as much as the children do!!!
Childhood and the thrill of Christmas morning doesn't last very long in a person's life and the memories, influx of love and giving, and sense of family togetherness is a precious memory when life's realities hit sometime in the early teens.
Whether you are spending $50 or $500 per child, the idea is to give that little one the feeling that they are loved and valued all the time and Christmas just happens to be the day we show it tangibly.
Donna, you bring up some very good points, don't get me wrong, I'm not a scrooge, I just don't want her tendency of OVER-REACTING (a family trait) here and thinking that if it's not bought TODAY, it WILL NEVER BE BOUGHT and ALL THE STORES WILL BE OUT OF IT -- ruin things for me!! ...one can only take so much of it...do you know where I'm coming from here?
That's my point, does it have to be that way -- NO! Some help in how to settle her from other's would be of use, as I clearly am not gettig it across to her! A woman's open-minded perspective would be appreciated! My beef here does not inherently mean that a scrooge lives within me.
Whether you are spending $50 or $500 per child, the idea is to give that little one the feeling that they are loved and valued all the time and Christmas just happens to be the day we show it tangibly.
It's still a sad thing that children need things to have it proven to them that their parents love and value them.
November 30th, 2005, 09:52 AM
We all conform to avoid being family and social outcasts, and it drives us crazier every year. 
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