Basically, we made our house at Christmas “without gifts”. When other people's gifts were opened, they were opened long before Christmas or opened somewhere else. As the holiday approached, we tried to stay away from any kind of commercialism and explained why. We give gifts to express our love and appreciation for others.
Love seeks the supreme good of the loved one. Our motivation for giving gifts should be to do so in honor of the birth of our Savior, who gave us the most precious gift of all salvation. Most of the time, the supreme good is not received with expensive gifts, but with simple things of everyday use or value. When children are filled with gifts at Christmas and for birthdays, this usually teaches them that they deserve to receive beautiful things on these special days and they expect to receive this treatment every year.
In the past we made the Christmas boxes for Operation Christmas Child, and Samaritan also has a program where you can buy practical things for those in need, and then plan a lot of fun activities for the holidays, such as seeing the Christmas lights, volunteering, visiting family, ice skating, going out for drinks Heat chocolate, or whatever you can think of, so they don't think about gifts. My great aunt occupied her usual place in front of the Christmas tree and meticulously read each name and whose gift it was. I know that places like Samaritan's Purse publish gift catalogs at Christmas where you can donate money for specific gifts for the less fortunate. This year, Heather Hund and her family will meet in West Texas on December 25 and will consolidate a new Christmas tradition, in which each family member is randomly assigned to give a gift to another family member and a domestic pet.
