Making a List & Checking it Twice!

One of the memorable and magical moments for a lot of us growing up, and for a lot of our kids this month, is the fine tuning and production of "the list". When I was a little girl, we actually mailed our list to Santa! The excitement was intense. Making a Christmas list, whether Santa is a part of your Christmas or not, is one of many happy traditions of the season for most families with children. And actually, we depend on these lists to help us find out what those inner secret wishes are, or to help our more expressive and easily excited children to narrow down their expectations! :0) However, as with many traditions, the culture of a community affects and re-defines them with time. The Christmas list of a child growing up in the early 70's on a Brazilian missionary field, was very different from the list of a child growing up on Long Island in 2008. Sadly, expectations and the "LI Entitlement" epidemic have crept their way into far too many unsuspecting homes. All of this can lead to a little apprehension about how to pull gift giving off. Last night I was on the phone with a very close friend, who is really burdened by the prospect of both maintaining faith in Santa, and being moderate in how much they spend on each of their kids for Christmas-especially the ones that are old enough to make expensive requests, but too young to know that Santa has limitations.

What mom doesn't want her child to experience that moment of wonder and joy at finding their wishes come true Christmas morning? We love to see our children bursting with happiness. The opportunity to create that wonder is in our hands at Christmastime! And...greed can ruin it all. So how do we groom grateful kids in the midst of all this excitement and anticipation? Do we put out the fire of excitement and extinguish expectations by eliminating all lists? I mean, the very production of a list says something doesn't it? And Christmas IS all about giving. It's funny though, how we say that, knowing that it's true. And yet other aspects of our traditional Christmas don't really line up with that knowledge. At it's best, for most families, we tack on the spiritual and meaningful. We add things like Shoe boxes for kids and maybe an extra offering or gift for a needy family, to otherwise quite secular gift giving traditions.

The Christmas list is fun! I love seeing the kids sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate, caught up in wonder and hopeful excitement. And actually, it's a practical tool in my house. But I also think it needs constant clarifying and even re-defining. A list, while a child is working on one, needs to be set up in their mind as a means for helping family and others to get to know them and their wishes. Lately, I think it's that simple. When a child, or a grown up for that matter, is asked to make a list we just need to frame it differently. I really think we need to be deliberate as moms, to lead and teach away from entitlement. Entitlement is a lurking monster and it's one of the cultural norms that we need to guard our hearts and minds from. If we, mentally even, look to "checking things off" that are on our kids Christmas lists, what are we really teaching? I'm NOT saying that we shouldn't get things our children really want for Christmas! I am saying though, that if we get most of the things on their list for them, that it will train an expectation that we might not really want to grow. In spite of our spiritually driven, balancing phrases like "Christmas is really about giving", that we hope will neutralize what we practice.

We need to intentionally invite personal, creative, off-list, original gift giving back into our Christmas. Our Father in heaven, looked down on us, at just the right time in history. He lovingly studied our needs, dreams, even our design. In light of who we are, the sin and selfishness that we are born into, and in light of what we were created to become, He gave. He gave to us a Child, a Son. A Christmas gift that would become our hope and life - and that would draw out of each one of us all of the things He designed for us to be. A beautiful history to work at re-creating through honoring traditions this Christmas.