How we approach gift giving with our kids

I have seen many posts of late spanning across many media platforms detailing how parents approach the festive seasin, father xmas and gift giving in the festive season.

Now as I have said before hubby and I are both pagan however being as many of the xmas traditions stem from the pagan winter solstice Yule and given that we do not feel it fair to impose our beliefs on the kids or to keep them from traditions or celebrations shared by their friends/peers we obviously do 'celebrate' xmas in our own family way.

One of my favourite annual festive traditions with my boys is to bake cookies and decorate them which is what we did today, it went really well and the cookies are stinken adorable. (See pics at the end of this post)

This post is about our approach to gift giving though so im going to get into that now.

I love giving gifts, wrapping and giving I LOVE it, although the actual shopping bit sends me into a blind panic which happened twice this week, but generally the  approach that has worked best for us especially since Loghan is getting older and is starting to question (I wouldnt mind however he would make sure to tell his brothers the " truth" he wouldnt see how devastating that would be and I'm not ready for that heartache), so what we do is I have the kids draw up a list, this year it was 5 items each, I then take their lists and budget appropriately within what we can afford however as far as the kids are concerned, their list goes to santa with some money from us and then santa delivers on xmas eve.

This works for us because the kids then understand that they cannot simply ask for anything due to budget constraints but still keeps the magic of santa and his elves alive, the kiddos thus far have been quite happy with the explanation.

As far as other gifts our concerned we only buy for our parents on either side and then close family and friends kids no other adults, yes its nice getting gifts as an adult but it just isn't practical for us and thus far everyone understands that and agrees with it.

I find it really interesting how many different approaches there are and what works for each family.

What works for your family and has this changed with time?

Thus far my holiday has been great somewhat testing at times because the boys love to egg eachother on when they are even slightly bored and it is just not possible for me to keep up activities all day long. Im looking forward to their faces on xmas morning and really hope that everyone has a wonderful festive season: happy Hanukkah, joyful Kwanzaa, merry Christmas, blessed yule, and brightest blessings no matter what or if you celebrate!