My parents host Christmas each year for myself, my brother, my two sisters and our combined 14 children. Since their immediate family has grown to 24 members, it’s difficult for mom and dad to buy significant gifts for everyone. We have taken some of the pressure off them by starting a new Christmas tradition.
Two years ago my sisters and I decided that our families would draw names for Christmas. We hold two separate drawings – one that includes the 10 adults and another for the 14 children. We have found this drawing works very well, each person receives a smaller number of gifts but the ones they do receive are more substantial. We also add a twist each year by including a specific gift theme. The first year we held the drawing our theme was “Music and Movies.” My 5 year old received the Disney movie “Cars,” as well as the soundtrack from the movie and a Cars t-shirt. I gave my sister the newly-released “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie and a CD from Kenny Chesney, her favorite singer.
Last year our theme was “holiday gift baskets,” which turned out to be a lot of fun! Dad got a basket filled with John Deere items – a bottle opener, calendar, 1000 piece puzzle and replica toy tractor. My husband’s camouflage basket will filled with deer hunting accessories and my gourmet food basket included a paella pan, Spanish rice and a bottle of wine to complement the dish.
We have already decided on this year’s theme – it will be “photo frames and memories.” I’m hoping to draw my mom’s name because I have a great idea to purchase a personalized frame and include baby photos of each of her 14 grandchildren. For the kids’ gifts, I have found some adorable Sesame Street frames that I’ll include with a school memory book that has a page for each grade. So far this tradition is one that everyone likes, and we look forward to carrying it on for many years!
It really is hard to keep finding original Christmas gifts for your loved ones. I’m a fan of personalized gifts, myself. They rarely get returned.
Comment by SingingChristmasCard.com — October 30, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
My family does something similar at Christmas to cut down on the cost of gifts– we call it a gift lottery and we put all our names in a box and each person selects a name from the box and that’s the person we buy gifts for. The only exception is that everyone buys gifts for the kids. It really works out well for us during these hard economic times.
Comment by Beth — November 7, 2009 @ 1:24 pm