Materialism and Christmas

Chris absolutely loves anything electronics. He always has. If he ever has any extra money, or gets money for his birthday, he buys something having to do with it. I never really got it before. There has never been anything that I felt compelled to spend my money on. That is, before I had children.

Now, if I have any extra money, I spend it on them. Usually nothing big, an outfit here or there. But it almost always goes to them.

So now, with Christmas upon us, I have been trying very hard not to fall into the trap of materialism. To not spend money on toys and things that really, they absolutely don't need. We don't have the room for it and they really don't need more toys. Granted, most of the toys they currently have were from birthday presents and Christmas presents from family. There are so many things that I see at stores and just think what a great present it would make and how much they would love it. And around Christmas I almost feel into the trap. Almost.

You see, I see family members who buy their children all this stuff for Christmas. It always starts off small, and then the bigger they get, the more expensive presents they have to buy. Their children just expect it. They expect their parents to spend hundreds of dollars on them.

I don't want to fall into that. I don't want to make Christmas into something that causes us to go broke, just to make our children happy. To raise our children to expect all of these materialistic things, and then be disappointed if they don't get the popular, expensive toy of the year. I want our children to love Christmas for the times we spend as a family and the traditions we make. I want them to recognize the need to give to others and not what you yourself get.

So, this year we are buying 1 toy each from Santa and a few things for their stockings. From daddy and I they mostly got different art supplies, as they love coloring and drawing, cutting and gluing. They got paint, watercolors, markers, glue sticks, construction paper, and things like that. And you know what? I know they will love it. They will use it all up. If we had just spent money on toy after toy, they would have loved it for a time, and then it would just get pushed to a corner and forgotten about.

It's an internal struggle not giving in. I love seeing my children happy. To see them getting things they will love. I'm just desperately trying not to raise them to fall into the materialistic trap that we here in the US are currently in. And it is definitely hard to go against the grain when everything around you tells you not to. I'm just trying to keep my eye on the bigger picture though and not on the instant gratification.