Help me make Christmas more wholesome.

[JusWunderin]

We had huge Christmases as kids. Mountains of presents from ‘Father Christmas’ and another huge bag of gifts from grandparents. It was in honesty, the best time, it really was. It was so so magical and I love the way my parents put so much effort into it.

So I tried to follow suit with my children. But I’m finding it ridiculous 😂 we buy them a shite load of gifts, that are either left untouched, broken, or ruined within 3 months. The clear out I have to do before every Christmas has been depressing and wasteful. I thought because we go through their room every November and bag up a load of stuff for charity, that it would feel worth it. But it doesn’t, it feels wasteful, especially now they’ve at an age where they’re more experimenting with toys, they’re getting messy, dirty, ruined, broken (doesn’t help that toys these days are crap quality either)

Im also finding my kids are.. a bit spoilt. I have to be honest I’ve only got myself to blame. I went through a period of buying them toys/magazines everytime we just popped to the shop. Then it started being expected so we cut it down a lot. Now it’s just occasional treats. But the ‘I want, I need’ attitude remains, along with stamping feet and ‘I won’t do as I’m told if you don’t get me this’

I’ve created monsters (or a monster, my youngest is only 2.5 so he’s not so bad!) but my 4yo DD is just so demanding.

So this year, I’m toning down Christmas ten fold. They’ll have a few presents each, nothing like previous years and I want to make the period much more family-oriented, wholesome.

The only think I can think of is movie nights with hot chocolates and comfy pjs. Maybe some crafts days too.

but what else can we do together to keep the focus away from gifts and presents?

Edited

Oh I seen what you did there. Sorry misunderstood.

Some churches do toy services where your DC can give a gift to be given to other children in need of gifts.

Lots of charities will do shoe box appeals where you can fill a shoebox of gifts/needed things. If you chose to fill boxes for the same age as your children you can talk about not every child being as fortunate at Christmas.

You can make pictures to go with a little letter for older people in homes who have no visitors at Christmas.

Let them help you put some Christmassy food in the food bank box.

Build a gingerbread house.

Make and decorate cookies in Xmas shapes.

Make paper chains and popcorn chains for the tree.

Make homemade Xmas cards. Hobby craft have Xmas stampers and glitter.

Make a Xmas wreath to hang on your door.

Can I suggest a practical Advent calendar? Socks and/or pants, you know that they will need them during the year. I used Sainsburys, TK Maxx and other supermarkets. If you buy packs of five then it is not so expensive, I bought numbered bags from Amazon and delivery them each morning, so no risk of someone opening it all at once. It then becomes something brand new to wear everyday in December. On Christmas Eve, do colouring books and pencils to keep them busy.

Since my DH and I got together, we try and do as much Christmassy stuff throughout the whole of December! I find the build up to the actual day is more enjoyable than the actual day itself.

We have a little advent house that we bought from The Works. We decorated it and we put together a list of ideas and pop an activity behind each door. Some of them are so simple, and others require more planning.

For example:

• walk to see neighbourhood lights
• Crazy hot chocolate night
• Gingerbread decorating/house making
• making homemade mince pies
• carol services
• going to a winter wonderland/market/light trail
• pub evening with mulled wine/cider
• board games evening
• Christmas movie night
• present wrapping/songs evening
• ice-skating
• calling overseas friends/family

We're due a baby this year so things are going to change drastically and will become more child-friendly but you get the idea!

Yes, I did Elf on the Shelf before it became big over here where it now seems to be focussed on misbehaving antics or as a surveillance tool for Santa ruining some of the magic in my view.

Our Elf was well-behaved, and got promoted to supervisor and had to go off and supervise other elves during the week just hiding a chocolate coin in the morning. At the weekend he would bring ingredients for mince pies or making salt dough ornaments, drop off the panto tickets, delivered DD gift wrap and gifts for me as a single parent so she had a 'suprise' to give me etc, stuff we would do anyway but with the extra magic of the Elf.