What a wonderful time of year to enjoy all the sights and sounds of winter and the holiday season.  “‘Tis the Season to be jolly!”…. or is it stressed?  So often Christmas revolves all around what Santa is going to bring.  This creates a great deal of anticipation for young children, followed by one big event and then the let down that it is over.  And often disappointment that it wasn’t all that was built up in the child’s mind.  The holidays are such a busy time with so many demands and expectations.  Parties and events to attend, family demands, shopping, and so on.  As soon as Halloween is over, the stores are decked out in holiday décor.  Christmas lines the shelves.  Christmas music plays.  The holiday advertising begins, targeting our children with all the most amazing and fascinating toys that no one should be without.  And the Holiday frenzy takes hold.  As Christmas approaches, each child’s list increases with all the things they simply must have, as does their anticipation for the BIG day.  As a result, their behavior deteriorates and they headline Santa’s naughty list.

As parents we often feel the pressure to create the perfect, magical experience for our children.  We don’t want them to be disappointed!  It is such a special time.  One of the highlights of childhood, after all!  We find ourselves battling in the aisles of the toy department for that special item and fighting the crowds at the mall. As a result, instead of creating a special time for our children, we have very little time to spend and very little patience during the time we have.  Their behavior (and ours) deteriorates even further.

Our society and commercialism perpetuates this scenario.  However, we can create a magical experience and a much calmer, joyful time.  In the book, Unplug the Christmas Machine, Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Steheli tell us:

From talking with children, parents and child specialists, we’ve learned that in addition to a few well-chosen gifts, children really want and need four basic things for Christmas:

1. 1.  Relaxed and loving time with the family

   2.  Realistic expectations about gifts

2. 3.  An evenly paced holiday season

3. 4.  Strong family traditions

So, how can we give our children what they really want and need for Christmas?  Here are a few suggestions.

• Plan fun family time together. Make homemade ornaments, decorate together, build a gingerbread house, curl up by the fire with a holiday story, tell stories of your happy childhood memories, make cookies, do special things for the elderly or those in need, enjoy a few special holiday outings or events.

• Minimize the commercial impact your child experiences. Turn off the TV and replace that time with special seasonal activities that you do with your child like those listed above.  Avoid the toy aisles when shopping.

• When your child does get bombarded by commercialism, talk with them to help begin understanding of how commercials work and that the toys on TV are rarely as exciting in real life. Help them to choose just a couple really special items that they’d like.

• Involve your child in making or preparing gifts for others. They can make gifts and cards, help with holiday baking and wrapping presents.  Older children can be helped to pick out and pay for gifts for others.  For younger children it is best to minimize their time in stores.

• Involve your child in helping those less fortunate. Pick out items to give, prepare a food basket, visit a nursing home to sing carols, for older children a special chore can be done to earn money to donate to a worthy cause or help in a soup kitchen.

• Don’t feel pressured to begin the Season along with the stores. Waiting helps minimize the building anticipation that is difficult for children to maintain.  Enduring more than a two month build up is just too much for young children.  When children notice all the hubbub around them, you can discuss that it really isn’t time yet as it is still a long time until Christmas.  Advent calendars are a great way to help children understand and count the days until Christmas.  Once you begin your holiday decorating and activities, space out special events throughout the Season.

• Plan a few special activities or events to look forward to after the big day to avoid the let down of it all being over once the presents are unwrapped.

• Create family traditions that your child can look forward to each year. Taking a hayride to cut down your tree, baking cookies for the neighbors, a special ornament each year, specific foods for Christmas dinner, putting out cookies and milk for Santa, a special Christmas Eve story.  Traditions give children a sense of comfort and security as well as create memories of how the Season unfolds.

• Share your spiritual traditions and beliefs. Tell the Christmas story in a simple positive manner.  Allow your child to set up the nativity scene.  Enjoy dressing up for a special Christmas service.

• Learn about and enjoy the winter holiday traditions of others. Not only Christmas but Hanukkah, the Solstice Kwanza, Ramadan, and others.

• Remember what it is like to be a child. Look at the world through your child’s eyes and bring back that childlike joy and excitement inside yourself.  Relax and take the time to enjoy with your child.  After all, what children really want for Christmas is time with YOU!

The holidays are, or can be, a special, magical time of year for all of us.  With just a little planning, and willingness to avoid getting swept up in the crazy, we really can experience the peace and joy of the Season.

Note:

**This article focuses on Christmas, however, is relevant to all gift giving holidays.

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A recipe for ornaments:  Cinnamon Dough

1 cup ground cinnamon

1 ½ to 2 cups flour

2 cups water

Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan.  Remove from heat and stir in the cinnamon.  The mixture will be shiny and stringy.   Add the flour to the cinnamon mixture ½ cup at a time, stirring well after each addition.  You may have to knead the last half cup of flour into to the dough after it has cooled.  The finished texture should be similar to pliable cookie dough.  Lightly flour the work area and have your child roll out the dough and cut shapes with the cookie cutters or free form the dough into figures.   Use a pencil to make a hole at the top of the shape for hanging.  Dry for one or two days, then hang on the tree, on a package or in the room.  Smells wonderful!

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Excerpt From Robert Fulghum

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

I do know what I want someone to give me for Christmas…

It’s delight and simplicity that I want.  Foolishness and fantasy and noise.  Angels and miracles and wonder and innocence and magic.  That’s closer to what I want.

It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this:

I want to be five years old again for an hour.

I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot.

I want to be picked up and rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to bed just one more time.

I know what I really want for Christmas.

I want my childhood back.

Nobody is going to give me that.  I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try.  I know it doesn’t make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway?  It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now.  In you and me.  Waiting behind the door to our hearts for something wonderful to happen.  A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded, and terribly vulnerable to joy…

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