A few years ago my husband I decided that we needed to set a few boundaries on the amount of gifts our children were receiving (from us and my mom - HI MOM). Christmas was losing it's meaning. The kids were getting real cranky the more gifts they had to open. Seems that all they wanted to do was to open a few toys and play. We set a limit of 5 gifts per child from us/Santa and 5 from my mother. Now that is 10 gifts, which is still pretty significant, in my book.
We had already composed the letters to Santa and had them ready to go, when I remembered a commercial on TV that Macy's had a "drop off" area for the kids to mail their letters. So yesterday I brought the kids to the local Mall to drop off their letters to Santa at the Macy's "Believe" red mailbox. It's a cute area decorated to the nines. The mailbox is HUGE and the kids thought it was pretty cool!
After mailing the letters, we walked around and low and behold, there he was in the middle of the mall already, SANTA himself. Zachary told Santa that we JUST mailed our letters to the North Pole (My kids know that that is not the REAL Santa just a helper to the real Claus). So the process came full circle with encounter as Zachary proceeding to tell Santa what he had on his list...lol...
Thankfully our children know why Christmas is celebrate and that the toys are just icing on the Birthday cake for our Savior.
Have your children written their letters yet?
We had already composed the letters to Santa and had them ready to go, when I remembered a commercial on TV that Macy's had a "drop off" area for the kids to mail their letters. So yesterday I brought the kids to the local Mall to drop off their letters to Santa at the Macy's "Believe" red mailbox. It's a cute area decorated to the nines. The mailbox is HUGE and the kids thought it was pretty cool!
After mailing the letters, we walked around and low and behold, there he was in the middle of the mall already, SANTA himself. Zachary told Santa that we JUST mailed our letters to the North Pole (My kids know that that is not the REAL Santa just a helper to the real Claus). So the process came full circle with encounter as Zachary proceeding to tell Santa what he had on his list...lol...
Thankfully our children know why Christmas is celebrate and that the toys are just icing on the Birthday cake for our Savior.
Have your children written their letters yet?
Comments
I know what you mean about trying to limit the toys for our children. Each year we try to cut back and really focus on the true meaning of CHRISTmas!
Cute idea of mailing letters to Santa at the mall :)