but before that, thanks to all of you for the amazing words of encouragement and support you have given me regarding my last post. it has seriously been a huge blessing to hear from so many of you. i am so thankful for Jesus and his beautiful redemption, in my life, and in yours. so, thank you.
back to the topic.
lets talk about christmas. the most wonderful time of the year.
if i am honest, i dont always LOVE the holiday season.
i dont particularly like thanksgiving, and my birthday is right in the beginning of decemeber, so christmas always feels rushed, and stressful. i feel like i never fully get to enjoy the season, i never get to do all the things i want to do, see the people i want to see or bake the treats i want to bake. all i do is fall behind and leave everything for the last minute and then i cry on december 23 that we have not done a single holiday thing, we bought to much {or not enough} gifts, we dont have cookies to snack on, and we have not been generous to those around us. its ridiculous, but it is true.
this year there is an aching in my heart to do things differently. very, very differently.
like i said in an earlier post, we are pretty much on a tight budget. there is not a ton of wiggle room - which makes getting christmas gifts a little bit hard. so, i was praying about how Jesus would have us do christmas this year, and i was reminded of this blog post i read last year. i talked it over with nick, and we decided that this is what we will be doing for our family this year. instead of buying each other and maggie a bunch of stuff that we dont really need, we can give gifts that are pracical, useful and not a bunch of stuff that will get tossed in the back of the toybox by january. plus, the little rhyme is so cute i can hardly resist it.
something to wear,
something to read,
something you want,
and something you need.
this solves the budget problem really well.
it is also going to make shopping that much easier, knowing that i only need to pick up 4 things for nick, and together we need to pick our 4 things for maggie. i like to buy gifts for people, and this is a good way to cap off how much i spend.
something that bothers me more than how much we spend, or how many christmas cookies we bake, is how generous we are to those in need during this season. truth be told, nick and i didnt do a very good job of that last year. like, i dont think we gave anything to anyone who had less than us last year. i could blame it on 200 things, but i dont want to. i just want to own it and say that this year we are going to do something different.
but i still go back to the " well how do we give and be generous when we dont really even have extra for ourselves?"
i dont want that to be a reason for us to not give.
so when i read about this amazing christmas jar that danielle
and her family are doing, i knew we had to do it too.
i could write a whole post about it, but since my sweet friend already did, i'll just let you hop over to her blog and read what she wrote about it. you will want to do it too. and i think you should. :)
we have yet to start our jar, but i am hoping to by the end of next week. i cant wait to use it to gift to someone else on Christmas eve!
there is so much more that i am doing to work on making our holiday season a lot less stressful, and more meaningful. i'll be back with part 2, sometime before december. i promise.
We just started doing the want/need/wear/read thing. It's awesome because it really gets you thinking about the person and the gift and helps you be a better steward with your money.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing we do at Christmas are countdowns. This year there will be three. We do a 25 Days of Christmas that focuses on no cost family activities. A 25 days of scripture to help ready our hearts. And this year we are adding a 12 days of Christmas kindness. :)
We talked about this and decided we're going to do it! Although it was clear that we could still easily go overboard, so we decided to set a limit—like $100, or something—that can be divided up however among the four gifts. Can't wait.
ReplyDeleteAnd I love the Christmas jammies. Never too early! We just discovered how many cute ones Target has, which took a crazy amount of self-control not to get ;)