I wrote a post a few years ago about this rule of buying 4 Christmas presents for your child: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read.
Well, guess what, I still disagree with this.
And as a direct consequence of this: how many presents do they end up each? 3 or more? 5 or more? Plus presents from the grandparents and stocking fillers.
I mean I love spoiling my family at Christmas. But we might have just gone a little too far with the number of presents. I normally not the one to use the “when I was a child” line too often. But in this case, it’s probably appropriate. Because yes, we did get one present each from our parents.
In Hungary, Baby Jesus brings the presents and not Santa/Father Christmas, as he visits on the 6th of December. But my family is not religious, so for me, the presents were from my parents ever since I can remember. And we children made handmade gifts for our parents.
But back to the idea of how much is too much. I’m reading that people are spending days wrapping presents for a family of 4. To be frank this seems a bit excessive to me. But then I bought 3-5 gifts for each child as well. Earlier, when they were younger, I was able to maintain a one big gift only rule. But this year that idea went out of the window.
I blame it on 2020! But I shouldn’t really, because one big gift they really wanted, a book and something for the stocking should be enough.
And then we haven’t even added the presents from the children’s grandparents and family (still, Father Christmas, so the children don’t even know that’s from them). Plus the stocking fillers!
The fact that some of them are second hand doesn’t matter of course.
I’ll do better next year.
How did you do with your Christmas presents this year?