It is that time of year again! "The most wonderful time" when the balance of wanting to get the world for your kid and being practical is a moment by moment decision of emotion. It is the time when the commercials and ads pummel your eyes and ears and open up your children to vulnerable longings that aren't always logical or even in their best interests. I see it on all our faces: the spectrum of the excitement over showering people we love with things that make them smile to the stress of how to afford those things and fit them in the packages and get them safely to their destination, etc. But I want us all to grasp the hope and marvel in what simplicity brings and not forget the amazing power of our imaginations. I believe one of the best earthly things we can give our kids and one of the things the earth tries to squelch is our parental imaginations. Realistic circumstances, good or bad, can weigh heavy on us if we allow them in and they can rob joy but we have such a gift to give when we harness our imaginations and allow them to be seen by our children. If we are doing well financially, we set aside our imaginations for “bought entertainment”; if we are struggling, we can let our imaginations be stifled with stress and exhaustion. We must fight to be steadfast in gifting our imaginations first to God and next to those who come after us.
I was blessed to grow up living with two elderly people and one woman who had indescribable imaginations- my mother and maternal grandparents! I couldn't tell you one single item I ever received as a child on Christmas morning. I remember toys that I had and loved but receiving them is a blur. My most vivid Christmas memory is irony to my mom, because it is one of the Christmases that she was least excited about. I can't tell you what happened to my grandparents ornaments but I only know for some reason they were unusable. My mom and grands were on tight funds that particular year. Replacements were out of the question, so we all made salt dough ornaments and used pinks, blues, yellows, and cookie cutters in the shapes of carousel horses, angels, bells, and stars because that is what we had. We baked and baked and painted and painted and I will never forget it!
We saved some of them and in following years I would try to hang them on the tree and mom would just roll her eyes and laugh because I loved them so much. She was able to replace the traditional ornaments and we never did this again but it made one of the happiest grooves on my long term memory.
I share this because there will inevitably be hard years for Christmas for all of us. There will be seasons of financial difficulty, seasons of health challenges that prevent the large Christmas tree from happening, seasons where we feel alone, missing the person who used to occupy that chair and question why we would decorate for just ourselves. There will be seasons when it is our turn to cover that shift at work on Christmas Day. I pray that even in these years we will find ways to celebrate what God did and does, to bring a smile to ourselves, to our kids, and maybe to a stranger, despite circumstance- to celebrate that there was a day that He was born to die for me; that we can choose joy and jubilation because we do not forget that. No, it may not be on the actual day of His birth but it is a time set aside to remember His birth!
Some simple ways to remember to look Up during the holidays on a minimal budget :
Salt dough ornaments or popcorn strands!
Box tree. Remember that kids love boxes and bows. Save the ones that come home from the grocery store or wherever. Stack them in the form of a tree, drape them in whatever you can find to decorate. You can even knock them down and restack again.
Book tree. Use books. Some of my favorite trees are ones made out of books arranged in a tree shape. These are great for offices!
Paper tree. Make one on the wall with construction paper. Decorate with popcorn, crayon drawn lights.
Toy Hall of Fame Decor. (Also great for offices and great conversation starter) The Dollar Tree has domino sets, dice, crayons, playing cards, and rubber ducks. A tree with single dominoes, playing cards, crayons, and rubber ducks tucked in its branches is a beautiful sight. You can even glue marbles on to give a shimmer and shine if you don't have string lights. Candlelight shining through or bouncing off a plastic or glass dish of marbles is beautiful! For sensory fun, lightly massage your palm over the tray of marbles.
Garland or decorate slowly. If a tree is too hard to put up with aging, consider adding only 7 ornaments each day, or just use garland in simple, easy to reach areas. Don’t decorate for others to see. Decorate to celebrate, even if you are not hosting.
Toilet paper roll snowflakes. They are easy, fun, and beautiful! They can carry the celebration on into January if some extra uplifting is needed!
And most of all, read the same books every year! Sometimes by yourself; sometimes together! Traditions heal and help us remember God, but if all our traditions are big and expensive and always have lots of people, we short-circuit them. We need simple woven amongst the extravagant, even when it is the best of years! This makes is easier to weave celebrations into the hardest of years, but often the simplest things are the favorite memories from all the years!