Again, with this Christmas thing.

Along with the difficulties of my husband having grown up without any of the trappings of Christmas, and I with every single blessed one of them, is that we don't want to draw the children's attention away from Christ's birth (which, okay, I KNOW did not actually happen on December 25th. But I'm willing to go with it.). This means we try to cool it with gifts. And by "we", of course, I mean "I".

I settled on 3 being the magic number. That's how many gifts baby Jesus got, right? It's only fitting, then, plus it's easy to explain. I try to make one of those educational and one just for fun, and one...made by me. Yikers. It is definitely a challenge coming up with that appropriate gift for Ben, and he may luck out this year and get all "store-bought" gifts. Leah, not so much...I've had plans for years to make her a frilly dress-up apron and a more practical smock. THIS is the year it actually gets accomplished! YES! Or, maybe for her birthday. Yeah, that would work too.

Um, what about stockings? I asked Aaron when Leah was a baby. Stockings? he said. What are these things you call stockings? Shocked, I explained that they are ONLY my favorite (secular) part of Christmas! But if we don't do Santa, how do we do stockings?

We just have them. No explanation necessary, we decided. The kids would just accept it, just like my sibs and I accepted that every year Santa seemed to either forget a present for one of us (that Mom would have to fetch from her closet) or he'd mislabel a couple, leaving me to open a gift meant for Ruth, or vice versa. Mom was on hand to remedy the situation, of course. No wonder not a single one of us kids remembers ever actually believing in Santa Claus.

I think I could fill 5 stockings with the gifts I have stashed for them, but oh well. There's always birthdays and Thanksgiving.

Wait, what? You say you've never heard of Thanksgiving presents before? Well, what did you think I was going to do with all those other things I want to give my kids? Since Aaron's family usually exchanges their gifts then anyways, and it's actually a more appropriate holiday for gift giving (and being thankful for them!), it just made sense to me to give the kids presents then, too. When we traveled, those gifts were books, DVDs, and the like - things good for passing the time in the van.

This year I had similar gifts, including a larger toy for each. However, Leah seemed to come down with a decent case of the gimmees, and Ben was in the middle of his large-group induced melt down, so I skipped the last couple presents. They'll show up eventually, maybe some day in January or February when we are all stir crazy.

Now, if I can just get Aaron to get me a present or two. Not that Christmas is about presents, of course! But I still like them.