My wife and I are veering off path for some of the typical American, Christmas traditions. In our experience, Christmas with kids is a lot of things it shouldn't be: consumerist, stressful, and overwhelming. That list should come as no surprise to the reader as these are THE common Christmas complaints. What surprises me is that, in the face of these complaints, many people repeat the same traditions over and over again hoping that maybe, this year, Christmas will be more jolly.
There are various reasons for this tradition lock-in (some of which I will get into later). For now, I will note that the current state of affairs is particularly sad because of what Christmas could be to those that celebrate it. In the darkest time of year, parents and children get time off from school to be together. Togetherness and joy set against a sad season should be the hallmarks of Christmas. Any traditions we follow should add to rather than detract from this vision.
Below is a list of traditions my wife and I have altered to better suit our Christmas needs. Before I jump in, a quick table-setter: I have a 2 y/o and a 5 y/o. We have implemented several of these ideas in past years, but this will be the first we implement all the ideas together. I can report back how it goes.
There's a lot you could say about gift-giving. Buying gifts for others is often Pareto inefficient. Cheap or suboptimal gifts seem wasteful and bad for the environment. Lots of gifts at once (particularly for children) can be overwhelming and overstimulating.[1]
Between ourselves, my wife and I have mostly solved the problem of gift giving. We instruct each other to purchase the practical items we need, and these purchases may or may not fall on Christmas.
But with our kids, we've found that we cannot simply ignore this tradition.[2] Christmas as "super awesome toy day" has made its way into their psyche through friends, children's books, songs, and media. Each night, we like to ask for a "rose, thorn, and bud" from our son to have him talk about what he liked and disliked about his day, and what he looks forward to in the coming days. Christmas has been a bud for three weeks straight now, and not because of my grand vision of "togetherness".
So, for us, there must be gifts. And I think gifts have their place—I am not allergic to the joy of children. But we've selected the following practices to optimize for joy, simplicity, and efficiency.
As with the gifts, we take pride in not buying throwaway junk that will spend the majority of its second life (lives?) becoming microplastics in our water supply. We're going to fill the stockings with oranges, two pieces of dark chocolate, and hard to open nuts (e.g., walnuts in the shell) along with a normal-looking kitchen nutcracker.[3]
The pièce de résistance will be waiting at the bottom of the stocking: nattou packs (Japanese fermented soy beans)—my kids' favorite food. My kids are weird. We also are not Japanese, but they are 100% into it and typically deplete any nattou stores we purchase with 1 or 2 days.
I'll note here that Christmas doesn't necessarily have to be over-the-top toy and sugar day. Nattou will spark joy for my kids, and maybe something else will work for other kids (coconuts?).
We decorate our houseplant each year with crafts and ornaments the kids make or bring from school. It works!
I guess we've become the parents that the other parents are going to be mad at. We've been open to our kids about the Big Man. We frame him as a metaphor for everyone who gives something to someone else on Christmas Day.[4]
We've also told our oldest that some parents like to pretend Santa is real, and he should try not telling the other kids. Anyways, sorry in advance.
Interestingly, my wife and I agreed to this approach from different angles. I view transparency here as a simple extension of the relationship I want with my kids: one where they know I tell them what I really think about any topic.
My wife, who is more religiously minded than I am, agrees with that approach and also thinks that lying to the kids about Santa Clause sets them up for a faith crisis later on. Interestingly, she knows several religious people who, in middle school, pattern matched pretty quickly from, "All the adults in my life lied to me about Santa Clause" to "Everyone is lying to me about God."
In lieu of an overwhelming number of gifts, we are aiming to enjoy the day together reading books, playing with the new toy, and (taking cues from the kids) a few simple crafts.
We've already mentioned trying to crack nuts. We also got some coffee filters to make snowflakes, and we got some fun sprinkles to decorate cookies together in the evening.
For dinner that evening, we picked something simple and easy to prepare but unique for the occasion: scallops with pasta and white sauce, and an easy salad on the side.
* * * * *
These are the things we're doing this year. Here's to hoping for a jolly, peaceful day!
Hanukkah seems like it has a better designed gift-giving tradition from this perspective.
Jehovah's Witnesses would have to confront this, and I am curious what that was like for any readers from that background.
Not the Christmas-y ones. Bah-humbug!
If you plan to do this, it may be important to set aside time to make sure you get buy-in for this approach from the grandparents. When my oldest was 3 years old, his grandparents disliked our approach and tried to persuade him that Santa was indeed real—look at these pictures!—and his parents were not telling the truth. This was uncomfortable.