Well, here’s a funny story. My older son knew there was no Santa, but he lost his first tooth far earlier than is normal–like at 4 1/2. I should have seen that coming since he also got his first teeth really early.
Anyway after he lost the first one, he came to me and asked about the Tooth Fairy. Well, I wasn’t sure what to do since we hadn’t even talked about it yet. I asked him to tell me what he knew about the Tooth Fairy.
Oh, he says, I know it’s not real. But can we pretend?
Weird, I have never put a limit or minimum number of gifts for my kids. I also don’t do the dollar amount. In our house, it depends on our financial situation and the kids’ lists. What it always entails is 1 big (as in dollar amount) gift from “Santa” – he also stuffs the stockings – and then the rest are from Mom, Dad or sibling. This year, we are having massive financial issues, so it will be smallish, but one year in recent memory (we had a really good year) the gifts spread halfway across the living room.
While I do try to keep the number of gifts given to each around the same, my teenager usually gets less, but more expensive gifts. She is fine with it, because she knows the score, as it were. My son doesn’t care so long as he gets the one or two major items he has requested (which this year is the I Can Play Guitar game) – which is rarely a problem. We remind him that Santa doesn’t like to bring gifts that Mom and Dad can’t afford, because what if it got damaged? Then he would want Mom or Dad to replace it and they would be sad knowing they couldn’t afford to replace it – works like a charm
As a side note – my 15 year old still claims to “believe in Santa” because once you stop believing in him, he stops delivering gifts to you and since the most expensive gifts (this year, an Ipod, in the past it has been a trampoline, a computer, cell phones, etc) come from Santa… She’s a cute kid who will argue with her friends over the existence of Santa Claus (within my hearing, anyway!) It’s a fun thing.
I do the three gift thing, and we’re not even Christian. :o
However, there was never an announcement, just something I decided on when he was little so he’s never known it to be any different. I wanted him to not be overwhelmed and devalue the presents, and I was also worried about setting standards of largesse that I might not always be able to keep up.
So in our house, the child gets three gifts from Mom and Santa fills the stocking, but Santa is allowed to shop for cool things like Bionicles and videogames; as long as it physically fits in the stocking it’s good. He then gets one or maybe two gifts from the grandparents, the aunts and uncles and family friends, usually the total haul is somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen or so, plus stocking booty.
3 gifts from parents (good enough for you-know-who, good enough for you!). 1 gift from various relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins, godparents, good friends).
gifts are opened when given, used only on or after christmas (jan.7th), unless it was a calendar; or specified by giver.
That’s how my parents kept me in line when I found out and my brother didn’t know yet. I also found out stockings would disappear if I didn’t believe…
so I still believe. I still get stockings (2 of them at the different houses). All the adults do, too bad none of us has got the winning lotto ticket in our stockings. But I love my socks and my chocolates.
It is! You get some of the oddest stuff in your stocking. Santa has a sense of humour.
Three gifts a kid? We both give our parents more than 3 gifts each. Our family has traditionally gone by dollar amount rather than number of gifts, so how expensive things we asked for determined how many gifts they gave us when we were young.
I recently found a little rhyme for this situation:
Something you want
Something you need
Something to wear
Something to read
That’s what we’re doing this year for the kids, plus stockings. Their stockings will have bath toys, bubble bath and a few more useful things (socks, underwear, toothbrushes, etc.). My parents are planning on giving each child an outfit, a toy my dad made for them, and one bought toy. I have no desire to have piles of noisy toys in our home, especially since my kids tend to just play with a few favorite toys and ignore the others.
I don’t get the huge number of toys to entertain through the holidays, either. What do they normally do? Certainly they can manage to entertain themselves without their parents purchasing the entire toy section at WalMart.
My folks never set a limit that I’m aware of, but my mom made absolutely sure their total expenditure was the same for both me and my sister. She has retained this law into our adulthood – a decade ago when I had cancer and they helped me out with bills, she gave my sister an equivalent amount of cash. When my sister recently had trouble keeping work and needed to apply to the First Bank of Parents, Mom’s offered me matching gifts, even though we don’t really NEED gifts right now and I’ve done my adult best to turn her down (*but… but… free money! NO, emilyforce, it is NOT free; you don’t really need it; your parents do need it for their retirement; be HONORABLE and stand on your OWN FEET; *etc.)
Santa gave us one special present each. Santa gifts weren’t necessarily the most expensive one, but they were the most anticipated (or asked about) one. Santa also stuffed stockings with fruit, candy, and maybe a few little things like cool erasers or keychains or soaps or something. Then there were two or three practical or semi-practical gifts from the ‘rents, and then there were two Grandparent Gifts each (sometimes extravagant, sometimes boring) and Other Relatives’ and Family Friends’ Gifts (usually generic and inexpensive, with a notable exception in the former workmate of Dad’s, Toyo Kawakami, Og rest her soul, who always got us the most fantastic autographed books) – three or four of those in all.
AAAAND Santa recycled gift wrap and “To/From” cards. So did Mom, but it was a lot more impressive when Santa did it (He REMEMBERED!). Man, I miss Santa.
My family is and always has been very big on spoiling kids for Christmas. I never really counted the presents, but I’m pretty sure it was consistently at least 15 for each of us, between “Santa” and my parents. Not counting stocking stuffers. Generally after a certain age these were all books/CDs/etc.–relatively small things that can stack up quickly. And usually there’d be one big thing for the three of us combined, or for the family as a whole.
Another question–at what age do you think gift-giving should be downscaled? I mean, I’m buying each of my parents two or three things this year, but it’s very asymmetrical–they still shower gifts down on us kids, and I’ve felt awkward about it for a while now. I think after this year I’m going to stop succumbing to their demand for a list, so at least I’m not complicit.
Gawd, I remember piles and piles, really to excess, but looking back realistically, each kid got one “big” gift, and then many very inexpensive or handmade gifts. Maybe not quite Dollar Store, but pretty inexpensive. I think my mom and dad got a big kick out of watching us unwrap, and their excitement made us enthusiastic about each and every item. Oh boy, a jump rope! With pink handles! Sparkle nail polish!
Sometimes, one really big gift to be shared took the place of the individual big gift. We still fondly recall the Year of the Atari. It’s amazing that one or both of us kids didn’t suffer a stroke from the excitement.
When there are grandkids to buy for instead of your own children. Believe me, we all have more fun watching the 2 year old open stuff than opening our own slippers and coffee mugs. I’d much rather my mom spend the money on the kids than on me. Of course, she still gets me stuff, and more things than I get her, but the focus is now on my kids, and I think that’s as it should be.
makes a mental note to add sparkle nail polish to the girl’s stocking this year.
If we’re talking just the parents/Santa, I usually go with 3-4. Generally each girl gets a good book, a toy, maybe a crafty thing, and they get to share a game. The rest of the family gives them so many presents that they are inundated, even though they’re all fairly small things.
I have 4 siblings, my husband has 5, and most of them get presents for the little ones, plus the grandparents–that’s a lot of people! We don’t do presents for adults anymore except for parents and children (my mom gets me a present, I get her one).
We seem to downscale once the person has children of their own. My parents still get me a gift, but it’s not very large. But my sister (in college) gets lots, and my brother (married but no children) gets some good stuff too. But then they also base it on need to some extent!
WhyNot, that’s exactly what we’re doing this year! We had started scaling back about 5 years ago doing an exchange where each person would only have to buy ONE gift. That helped keep things in perspective and brought the shopping down to practically nil. But now with my sisters having little ones, we decided to move the focus down to them.
I have no babies, but I do have three cats that eat like horses, I sure wish I could count them in this year! Ah well
We got our Christmas traditions from my wife’s family. For us the true meaning of Christmas is lots and lots of presents. Not spending a ton, but lots of packages. That for adults and kids. If we buy used books for someone, each goes into its own package. Ditto for underwear and socks. There is usually one or two big presents for each person, and lots of stuff from thrift stores. We’ve never counted, but I bet people have gotten 30 things some years.
It is a rule to never buy anything for yourself the month before, so that someone else can buy it for you and wrap it up. Presents come from everybody, not from a particular person, so there is a lot of discussion about who buys what for who. The money gets allocated on a Communistic system, so that at the moment we pick up most of the cost, no matter who paid for things originally. This way there is no competition about who gives the best present.
A few years ago when our daughter and her boyfriend didn’t have a lot of money, they ran around Chicago and got little bits of candy from all over the world, wrapped each package up individually, numbered them, and then rode little puzzles whose answer was the number of a candy. That was the year we were still opening presents the next day.
It’s excessive, but we don’t spend more for person than the national average, and it reduces the stress of finding the perfect present a lot.
Maybe I should copy this post into the what makes people think you are crazy thread.
One year we wrapped up presents for Ki the Wonder Dog (half border collie, and smarter than many people) and put a piece of kibble in so he could sniff them out. We let him open them, and he rapidly figured out how to do it. He turns over the box to find a flap, puts his paw on the box to hold it down, and then tugs on the flap with his mouth, and carefully rips the paper off. He usually never rips the box itself. We let him open some of our presents now, ones in boxes we don’t care about.
Well, no, they don’t do the little metal rings. One year, though, I thought it would be fun to give them catnip mice too. Big mistake. They sniffered those things out the night before, jumped up on the mantle, and knocked every stocking off its hook to find the 'nip. Not only was the crashing sound alarming in the middle of the night (sounded like a drunk Santa in our living room!) but they dug everything out of the stockings and ripped up a bunch of paper in their drug addled state. Now they get gooshyfood and a ball or something else non-nippy.
Both dogs and the kitty each have a stocking, the 3 turtles share one. Doggies get bacon treats and bones, kitty gets wet catfood and twisties or artifical flower buds, turtles get freeze dried shrimp. Santa hits the entire family. We return the favor and leave carrots for the reindeer along side Santa’s fruit & water (b/c milk just isn’t nice to either me or the hubby anymore ).
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