As a kid, I could hardly bear the wait. As an adult, I drink though it.
On Christmas morning, my kids shoot from their bedrooms like rocks from a sling shot and drool as they await the green light to begin shredding the wrapping on their gifts under the tree. There is no rhyme or reason beyond making sure Mommy has the camera ready and when it’s over, we all feel like we need a cigarette. It is as God intended.
And then there’s The Christmas Circle.
From as far back as I can remember, the circle has been a tradition. When the extended family joins us later in the day, Christmas Round 2 occurs – in slow motion. They pile in from all over the East Coast carrying bags and bags of gifts, pumpkin pies and summer sausage.
They arrange themselves it the living room with drinks in hand and it begins. The rules are that each person gets to open one gift. The circle begins with the youngest person and works its way up to the oldest. We go around opening presents in this fashion until everyone is out of gifts – or until someone puts a gun to their head (which hasn’t actually happened yet but it was close call last year).
This year my brilliant cousin Meredith & I decided to shake things up.
Family!
It’s Kim and me with details on the Christmas Twist, as promised.
Instead of everyone buying everyone a gift, we’ve hatched something that will be gentler on your wallet AND easier for those of us who hyper-ventilate over just the thought of shopping. Not to mention how much time it will free up on Christmas day to catch up and drink egg-nog.
Let’s give it a shot this year and see how we like it, shall we?
Here’s the scoop:
On Thanksgiving everyone who plans to go to Kim’s for Christmas will have their name added to the hat. Each person separately adds their name. For example, I will add my name. Eli will add his name. Henry will add his name. And Joe his.
We will draw a name at my house on Thanksgiving. You may not be at Thanksgiving but plan to be at Christmas. In that case, we will add your name(s) and let you know via e-mail who you “picked”.
At Christmas, you will gift the person whose name you drew during our traditional One Gift at a Time Around the Circle. This will equal one gift per person at that time and thus one turn around the circle THUS a much shorter circle time THUS much more time to spend enjoying the day and each other.
You may have other people you’d like to gift and that is a-okay but during the circle it is one-gift-per-person.
We hope you understand and appreciate why we are doing it this way. We really want to shift our focus from things to people. Plus whose got the dough this year anyway?!
Thoughts? Feelings? We welcome them all. It’s not total Socialism yet.
Love,
Kim & Meredith
Does your family have a gift-giving tradition?
Has it changed this year due to the economy?
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If Nana is not thrilled you must have done something right.
We come from a huge family too. We started this about 15 years ago or so and it worked out beautifully. We put a price on it though. My family grab was $50 and my husbands is $100. 2 years ago we changed it to a yankee swap. It works out and if you want to play you can, & if you don’t that’s ok too.
It’s hard for traditions to change, but they have too and someone has to do it.
We’ve been doing this in our family for years now, and it works really well. It takes some of the stress out of shopping, at least the financial stress, and everyone has something to open. I bet a lot more families will be drawing names this year. Very thoughtful of you to initiate!
I love this idea. We’re having big issues this year too since I’ve been on maternity leave and haven’t been paid since October. There’s no money for us to buy everyone a Christmas gift. I’m thinking of asking the people we buy for that have children that we should just exchange gifts for the kids and not the adults. I think this is fair and the kids get their presents. We don’t need anything anyway.
I think that is a fabulous idea. I always end up stressing over what to buy for everyone and freaking out over how much I spend. It shouldn’t be all about the gifts anyway. It should be about just being a family and spending quality time with each other. Not to mention stuffing your gut full of awesome baked goods.
I like it and can’t wait to hear the Nana follow-up!
ONe one side of our family, we do a white-elephant exchange. Dollare limit was $10 or $15, and everyone leaves with something plus we get the fellowship aspect going in our version of your circle. This year, we are even skipping that and everyone’s buying stuff to share with a homeless shelter that my aunt supports. Even the kids will buy a toy for a needy child. We’ll see how it goes; this is our first break from this format in like more than 20 years!!
My extended family just made that switch last year at our annual party at my Grandmother’s. On a sentimental level, it made me sad. Opening presents had lasted forever for all of the past 38 Christmases. But the logical part of me knew this just made so much more sense. Besides it made everybody else in the family insanely happy. We do our Christmas on Christmas Eve, so everyone is just in a hurry to get in and get out so they can do Santa and their own stuff with their immediate family. (Don’t even get me started on how that makes them treat my grandmother…!)
I started this in my family a couple of years ago. Instead of all of us buying a gift for every adult, we all just pick one person to buy for. It wasn’t an easy sell, but now they love it.
This year I was thinking of telling everyone to just donate $25 to charity instead of everyone just swapping gift cards. That, I KNOW, will not go over well!
We used to do that amongst extended family. Each adult would buy for one other adult and one kid, and each kid would buy for another kid. It worked out really well for us, we have such a big family it just wasn’t possible to buy for everyone.
I love Secret Santa! It’s a good way to ensure you don’t go broke.
I only have a very small family in Australia – Mum, Dad, brother, sister, boyfriend, so I don’t exactly have too many people to buy for, yet I still end up half-broke. Crazy.
This is what we do except everyone buys for my g-ma. There’s not that many of us but we do all buy for her..which usually means a walmart gift card, lol. We are SPECIAL like that, lol.
I’ve lived too far from my immediate family to enjoy Christmas with them for some 10 years now, and that’s ok. My mother in law makes up for a lot of it. She’s fanatical about Christmas giving and spending. Which is good, and not so good. If it weren’t for her my husband wouldn’t even see his siblings. And frankly, while doing the yearly family gathering is nice, it’s not enjoyable. The older brother and his family are snobs, know better than everyone else and flash their money like it grows on trees.
This year will be no different, I’m sure. But it IS family, and for mom in law, we go every year anyway. If we lived near my family, it’d be so very different. Ah well, what can one do but enjoy it anyhow?
p.s. Luv, luv loooooove your blog design
I tried to get my MIL to agree to this sort of thing the other day. She was game with just buying for the kids, as I’d proposed. But then, she went on to say that she’s the big Mama, and she wants to buy for all the kids (incl hubby & me)… so will I just send her a list of ideas of what I’d like? Gahhhh. Like I’m going to have her to my house and not give her a gift now…