My wife and I decided not to exchange Christmas gifts this year. And, while I had no issue saving the money and spending more of it on the kids, I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel.
It’s not that I wanted something in particular this year. I had no list, nothing in mind. I simply hadn’t gone through Christmas without giving my wife a gift in more than 25 years…and, I admit, I had become rather fond of receiving gifts from her, too.
To give credit where credit is due, it was all her idea. She suggested that we really didn’t need much and she was right. While we aren’t wealthy by any means, we are certainly fortunate to have what we need. We just don’t need to get each other anything anymore.
We even told our parents we didn’t need much. Of course,they had to get us something. So we asked them to help with some very practical gifts, like helping with the cost of new tires for my nine-year-old car. Much appreciated, by the way.
And we did make one concession. We decided to buy a new TV as a ‘family gift’ when the old TV in the basement stopped working and we found one on sale — but that was it. Seriously. Nothing else. Agreed?
We both agreed. There was heart-crossing and pinky-swearing and the threat of needle-in-the-eye sticking all over the place. [Not to worry, this isn’t a story about how one of us went all rogue and bought the other something anyway and people came away mad or sad. We both stayed true to our overly-sworn commitments.]
But I have to admit, I still had doubts…right up until Christmas day.
Not about the gifts themselves, but more about how the morning would feel. We had always done things a certain way and now that way was changing. Would the kids think it was weird (and why would I care about that)? What would we do, just sit there? Would we miss the simple act of opening presents? The surprise factor?
Would we miss it?
The happily surprising fact is that we didn’t miss a thing. We got to spend a lot more time watching the kids open their presents and play with them, and we also got to spend a little more on each of them because we didn’t spend that money on ourselves. That was nice.
As it turns out, the biggest gift I received this Christmas was the gift of being able to see it all over again through the eyes of others. The Christmas spirit was alive and well this year at our house...and it was all because I didn’t get a thing.
2 comments:
Funny... I actually made an effort to go the opposite direction this year. For a number of years, Jen and I have not really exchanged gifts, under the guise of "we really don't need anything". Truly, though, for me, it was more about cheap and lazy. It became a bit of a rut, and I wanted out of it this year. For me, the Christmas spirit was more alive because I did the opposite of you. Perspective is a funny thing. I loved yours in this post, though. Thanks for sharing. Great post!
Jeff: Thanks for your reply. I thought I had responded, but must have done something wrong. Anyway, yes, perspectives are interesting and are what make us all unique.
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