My general gift-giving policy for immediate family on Christmas is to start with a budget that I determine somewhere around November.
Using that budget, I start by thinking about big gifts that they’d particular like and get as many of those as I can fit (usually just one big gift, but maybe a few).
However, I think it’s more festive if people have a lot of things to open, so I do some smaller fun gifts at lower dollar amounts. These might include candy, used books, cheap jewelry, small toys, etc. (In some households, many of these items might be stocking stuffers rather than wrapped presents.) I like to have at least 5 or 6 items.
So one year, my wife’s presents included $180 of theater tickets, which were actually hidden inside the lid of a $10 box of chocolates, plus a $15 pair of gloves, her favorite $20 fruitcake and $5 fuzzy socks.
Our boys are each getting 6 packages, which includes one crafty thing, a game, and one package of a few books (each). Oh, and they’re each getting something that, to be honest, is actually for me. Ha! It’s good to be a parent.
I’ll leave it up to their grandparents to buy the big stuff.
We don’t have a set number of gifts. It might be a big gift and a couple of little things (as it is this year) or several gifts in a middle price range.
With Sinterklaas, our six year old son got a $50 Legos set he had put no 1 on his wish list. His grandmother payed for that one. I did most, actually all of the gift buying. His aunt gave him 10 dollars worth of glitter pens and glitter stick on tattoos, I got him the Harry Potter 8 movie DVD set, a pyjama, a book, and he got some smaller gifts like gloves, a hat, and candy.
But he gets smaller gifts about twice a month all thorough the year. Toys are tools and you do’nt buy tools once a year.
