sparrowpost

So after all the hemming and hawing, we celebrated a pretty classic Christmas. We did some indoctrination: read our 3 yr old The Night Before Christmas, encouraged him to leave out some carrots and cookies for Santa. We did up a stocking for him. And we did the limited gifts for everyone else. In the end I’m glad we did.

Somehow in aiming for no gifts, the gifts that happened were just right… impromptu, gag gifts that made for a funny Christmas morning, and still let people know that you’d thought about what they would like (or what would make them laugh.) Our 3yr old’s favorite gift was probably a whoopee cushion, which provided us at least an hour of entertainment today. This, combined with the artifice of the Santa story helped make the day feel like Christmas. We also enjoyed some wild romping and chasing, which seems in keeping with some of the pagan core of the holiday—the only part, as agnostics, we can really claim investment in.

My mother-in-law made the holiday special by planning and facilitating visits with our kid’s Great Grandparents and great Aunts and Uncles. These visits are really the core of the holiday, along with the feasts and tv sporting events we’ve gathered around. I’m also fortunate that Oliver appears to enjoy ballet. I went with he and my mother-in-law to the Nutcracker last weekend, and we’ve been drawing ballerinas and re-watching the ballet on Netflix every day since.

My mother-in-law also had the very kind idea of giving us ‘splurge money ‘ in lieu of gifts, which we have used to go out to dinner and which I took shopping with my yesterday at what might be my current favorite store (it specializes in Swedish textiles.) We followed this up by shopping for Christmas dinner, and for desserts and chocolates to eat in celebration of the holiday. As much as I wish to get away from Christmas materialism, I must admit that there is something deeply satisfying about buying nice cuts of meat and colorful foil-wrapped chocolates at this time of year. I have to concede that a rather significant part of the pleasure of Christmas seems to come from the act of shopping. Scheming about what things others might enjoy, and then laying these things aside as a surprise is deeply satisfying. Perhaps it is more satisfying when there is no pressure to spend a certain amount, or to get the one perfect thing. The irony of our efforts to limit the commercialization of Christmas seems to be the fact that it made the process of shopping even more pleasurable.

I’m not sure how to replicate this balance that we seem to have found this year in future years. Rules certainly seem made to be broken. But it seems that the common denominator in the equation was the fact that the shopping and making and wrapping we did do brought us joy, and weren’t done out of a sense of obligation. It also didn’t inspire tremendous guilt or buyers remorse, because on the balance our financial investments were generally small. So perhaps those are the guides for next year? No presents, except for the ones that you feel you can afford, and that bring you joy to make, buy, and give.

And with that I’m pretty sure that I’ve done lots of digging and over-thinking and in the end have arrived at the place that those who haven’t done any worrying about this already inhabit. This type of holiday seems to be second nature to my husband’s family, and also is the holiday that my family has kept over the years. So I concede to those wiser than I, and I hope we will have many more Christmases in this vein for years to come.