Christmas Shopping

I took my kids Christmas shopping. I recently discovered that most of my friends (often with only two children) have their children buy Christmas gifts for one another. Just to show you how complicated this can be with four children I will make you a little chart:

A family with two children:

Kate buys for Ben
Ben buys for Kate

A family with four children:
Aidan buys for Zoe
Aidan buys for Avery
Aidan buys for Ruby
Zoe buys for Aidan
Zoe buys for Avery
Zoe buys for Ruby
Avery buys for Aidan
Avery buys for Zoe
Avery buys for Ruby
Ruby buys for Aidan
Ruby buys for Zoe
Ruby buys for Avery

Understand? What for a family with two children is two gifts, turns into twelve gifts for a family with four kids. So I convinced my kids that the best way to use the resources (ie they each had a budget of $30) was to draw names. Actually, I just assigned them names and they each bought one gift. It was fun. Which surprised me because I hate shopping and because we left this excursion until the 22 of December so I expected chaos. It was mostly good. They choose appropriate gifts for eachother and they stayed within the preset budget.

We don't need more things in our house but the act of giving was important for the children and the thoughtful preparation: choosing, buying, wrapping were important things for them to participate in. Maybe next year I will encourage them to make their gifts for eachother but this year I just didn't have the energy.

Merry Christmas to you all! And probably Happy New Year too, since it's likely I won't be back until then. Love, peace, joy and happiness from our house to yours!