How do you do Christmas "right"?

We took the boys to our gym the other day to see Santa. We knew it would be MUCH less busy than the mall, the pics were $2, and it was about 2 blocks away which made it nice in the snow. Blake didn't want anything to do with Santa even though he had candy and even though Blake was told he was just a guy who worked at the gym in a different costume. He stood by the door and wanted nothing of it.

Tyler, on the other hand, was all smiles. He loved the guy in the costume, loved the candy, loves the gym. We stayed for a few minutes, donated some used toys and left. The end. But here's the thing:

I'm having a hard time deciding as a young family raising kids who are finally starting to understand stuff, just how to do Christmas the "right way". I know there is no right way. There certainly are a lot of wrong ways...lighting baby Jesus on fire, that would be one wrong way...etc. But I mean there's the whole, don't tell your kids at all about Santa because he's the anti-Christ and it's lying so they may end up to be mass murderers, and then there's the way I was raised where Santa and huge presents were TOTALLY the focus, so I didn't really get the whole Jesus thing until much later in my college years. Christmas was about me and what I wanted and what I was going to get. In fact, here's how evil I was...

When I was 16, my mom dropped me off at the mall to get a gift for her. Dad gave me $20 to spend on her and mom was going to pick me up in an hour with my gift in hand. Does anybody out there remember Mr. Rags? It was kind of like Ambercrombe now. Definitely a teen store, not made for a woman's body. BUT they were having a buy one, get one free sale. So, in I went. There they were...Long neck mock neck Mr. Rag shirts...usually $40, but today they were $20, and if I bought one for MOM, I'd get one for ME! And so I did. Since the Medium fit my then 25 pound body, I knew the Large must be perfect for my mom, so there you go...I bought a shirt "for my mom" for Christmas.

When she opened it on Christmas morning, she acted like I'd bought her diamonds. Holding it up to herself it was OBVIOUS it would never work. There were two BIG reasons why. But she didn't say a word. She wore that thing all over the house, as uncomfortable as it must have been, cutting off her circulation in many different places, because she wanted me to know how much she loved the gift. That's how a true mom is. And I deserved the death penalty.

I was a brat to the core and I don't want my kids to end up that way. I know that how we celebrate Christmas as a family will have a lot to do with how they will decide to celebrate with their families in the future. No pressure.

So, last year Mike and I participated in our own version of Advent Conspiracy (look it up on YouTube if you haven't seen it already). We bought gifts out of the World Vision catalog for everyone and then bought little toys for the cousins and for our kids, on top of like a soccer ball for a child in Africa. It was great and we loved it, but we got a sense of being "party poopers" from others who just wanted to do Christmas the regular way. It's like it's hard to do it if other people don't want to do it with you . So this year we're going to do the same type of thing, but we still have all of these questions in the air...Do we buy our own kids gifts even though they don't need anything? How much do we let them talk about the whole Santa thing without being Scrooges? What do they really understand at this age anyway? And then I talked to an amazing woman, Pastor Jeanne. She's been at our church for YEARS and she is SO with-it. She wants to preach until her dying day. Sometimes she just says things that make so much sense and I wanted to share it with you.

PJ: "Darbi, are you done shopping this year?"

D: "No, we're going to kind of do some sort of charity thing but I don't know what yet."

PJ: "Ever since my kids were little, we always took whatever we spent on presents and matched it and gave it to the church."

D: "I like that idea. It's just so hard as a young family to figure out how you want everything to be for Christmas. You know, with Santa and gifts and all that."

PJ: "We started from the beginning telling our kids that Santa is just a pretend man that children like to talk about at Christmas time. They were never once deprived by knowing that. I remember finding out as a child that he wasn't real and how upsetting that was that my parents had told me otherwise. I didn't want to do that to my kids. And as far as gifts go, we always did small gifts to the children at Christmas and told them they'd get their big gifts on their birthday. If they complained, we'd say, "Is it your birthday?" "No" "Who's birthday is it?" "Jesus'" and the complaining would stop. We would always have a birthday party for Jesus too."

So anyway, there is never a right way to do things, but I liked how Pastor Jeanne told me she did things. When Blake and Ty have a case of the gimmies, I can just explain to them that it's not their birthday yet. It's Jesus' birthday. And I think that's a good concept they can understand.

Hope you all are figuring out your special way to do Christmas with your families. It's hard, but as long as it's wrapped in love and prayer, it will be perfect. But let's just pray the snow storms will let up so I can do a little more shopping! Little miss last minute isn't quite finished and I don't want to have to shop at the Plaid Pantry on Christmas Morning like I've had to do a couple years in college because they're the only ones open!!