A Meager Christmas ( A Story)
Times are rough. Every year it gets more and more difficult to take care of the holiday obligations. I suppose part of it is my fault for having such a large family, but some things happen and it doesn’t make sense to pour over those issues. The kids and I have always been big on homemade gifts for Christmas and birthdays. All of the girls know how to knit and sew. It is amazing how many scarves are needed in such a large family. Of course, the boys never were very good at keeping track of their possessions, so they lost scarves regularly. I can’t really say I blame them. Some of them were pretty ugly. That’s what happens when you use leftover scraps to make your scarves. They do keep us warm, though.
The boys are good working with their hands. They are also good at finding scraps that the neighbors no longer need or want. I remember one year, Jeffrey found a broken fan. He brought it home and fixed it and gave it to me for Christmas. It still works, too. It was kind of funny that we plugged in the fan and tried it out even though we were all freezing that year. We found that turning down the heat by just three degrees can save us a small fortune in heating costs. It was easier to keep everyone bundled up indoors than to find money to pay the bill.
This year, we want to do something a little different. I’ve been saving my change for a whole year so that the kids could have a little bit of money for gifts. I only managed to save $50 since we kept robbing the change whenever we needed small things. Still, $50 dollars divided between 9 kids, we can do something with that. We’re going to the dollar store this afternoon to see what we can find. You’d be amazed what that store sells for a buck.
One of the kids found cute candy cane pens. They were 4 for a dollar. Everyone in the family would get a pen. Another found Christmas tapes for a dollar apiece and decided they would provide the music this year. Now if only the tape player will hold up long enough that we can hear all of her selections. Some of the other finds were boxes of envelopes and writing tablets, coloring books for the younger kids, crayons, and miscellaneous kitchen gadgets. The gadgets will come in handy if we make cookies for Santa.
There will be a letter writing campaign in the days before Christmas where the kids will write to their brothers and sisters and tell them all of the things that they would like to give them for the holidays but couldn’t. It surprises me sometimes how intuitive these kids can be. Last year, my youngest wrote that he wanted to give me a money tree so that we’d always have enough money. You can’t beat that.
In the meantime, we’ve found some old packing paper and we’re going to draw Rudolph, cut him out and decorate him. Then, we're going to play pin the nose on the reindeer. I need to find some red crayons so that we can get the right effect for the nose. I also have a couple of games we can play with candy canes. All of the kids like poker. The candy canes can be the antes. I just need to make sure they don’t get eaten all at once. We also have plenty of board games that have been collected over the years. This year’s winners will each get a piece of candy. I’ve got three chocolate bars hiding in the freezer for just that purpose.
We’re going to have a wonderful holiday. Here’s to hoping yours is the best ever.
The boys are good working with their hands. They are also good at finding scraps that the neighbors no longer need or want. I remember one year, Jeffrey found a broken fan. He brought it home and fixed it and gave it to me for Christmas. It still works, too. It was kind of funny that we plugged in the fan and tried it out even though we were all freezing that year. We found that turning down the heat by just three degrees can save us a small fortune in heating costs. It was easier to keep everyone bundled up indoors than to find money to pay the bill.
This year, we want to do something a little different. I’ve been saving my change for a whole year so that the kids could have a little bit of money for gifts. I only managed to save $50 since we kept robbing the change whenever we needed small things. Still, $50 dollars divided between 9 kids, we can do something with that. We’re going to the dollar store this afternoon to see what we can find. You’d be amazed what that store sells for a buck.
One of the kids found cute candy cane pens. They were 4 for a dollar. Everyone in the family would get a pen. Another found Christmas tapes for a dollar apiece and decided they would provide the music this year. Now if only the tape player will hold up long enough that we can hear all of her selections. Some of the other finds were boxes of envelopes and writing tablets, coloring books for the younger kids, crayons, and miscellaneous kitchen gadgets. The gadgets will come in handy if we make cookies for Santa.
There will be a letter writing campaign in the days before Christmas where the kids will write to their brothers and sisters and tell them all of the things that they would like to give them for the holidays but couldn’t. It surprises me sometimes how intuitive these kids can be. Last year, my youngest wrote that he wanted to give me a money tree so that we’d always have enough money. You can’t beat that.
In the meantime, we’ve found some old packing paper and we’re going to draw Rudolph, cut him out and decorate him. Then, we're going to play pin the nose on the reindeer. I need to find some red crayons so that we can get the right effect for the nose. I also have a couple of games we can play with candy canes. All of the kids like poker. The candy canes can be the antes. I just need to make sure they don’t get eaten all at once. We also have plenty of board games that have been collected over the years. This year’s winners will each get a piece of candy. I’ve got three chocolate bars hiding in the freezer for just that purpose.
We’re going to have a wonderful holiday. Here’s to hoping yours is the best ever.
posted by Vickie at 10:07 PM
2 Comments:
I like this one, Vickie. It's never a meager Christmas when there's family there and laughter. I remember I used to start a jar for each kid in January, and put my pennies in them. By the first of December they had money to buy Christmas presents for each other, and I never missed the pennies.
Nan,
That's a wonderful idea. I'm glad it worked so well for you. I'm also glad you enjoyed this one. I'm not sure where it came from, but I like it too.
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