Every year, on the day after Christmas, the women in my family gather at my parents’ house. My aunts, sister, mother, grandmother, my children, and I come together to just sit and visit with each other – something that seems to elude us on the actual holiday.
As we talk and knit, often finishing Christmas gifts that didn’t quite get done in time, we share stories of holiday preparations, shopping and gift-making.
In our constant quest to make holidays less stressful and more enjoyable for everyone, we also make plans for next year!
It was at one such gathering many years ago that we decided to “pull names” and only buy gifts for one person, instead of trying to get “a little something” for everyone in our large extended family.
For a while this was a great relief and a lot of fun. We picked names sometime in the fall and set to work creating something special for one person.
At some point, we decided to get birthdays under control as well by all keeping our Christmas person for the following year’s birthday.
For a while we were in a good groove and everyone seemed to be enjoying our simplified holiday exchanges, until somewhere along the way things started to shift.
Kids in the family (officially defined, much like dependants on health-insurance policies, as “up to age 21 or while a full-time undergraduate student”) came of age and the family circle expanded through marriage.
And then there was the question of boyfriends and girlfriends and whether or not to include them in the pool (i.e. would people date long enough to make it through the full Christmas-birthday cycle?).
Eventually things broke down and we pretty much all ended up exchanging gift cards – and not feeling all that great about it.
In hopes of saving us from another year of uninspired gift-card swapping, my sister started an e-mail “wish list” that we were to all add to and pass along.
We tried this for a couple of years with some success, but not everyone played along with giving ideas, and not everyone played along with buying from the “suggested gift list,” so this plan was eventually scrapped, which brings us to last year’s post-holiday review and this year’s holiday challenge – homemade gifts.
It seemed innocent enough: one homemade present and a full year to make it happen. And we all agreed that it didn’t have to be completely handmade.
The idea, once again, was to simplify the experience of Christmas gift-giving and prevent last-minute panic shopping by encouraging us to spend more time than money on presents.
The hope was that we would really think about the person receiving the gift and connect with that person in a way that a $50 gift card from Home Depot just can’t do.
In the weeks after Christmas, e-mails were exchanged, and ideas were flowing.
And then I’m not quite sure what happened. Spring rolled into summer and outdoor fun and parties and busyness.
Dreaming about homemade Christmas gifts, and much less doing anything about them, just kind of drifted away.
And then next thing we knew it was fall, and like it always does in September, time seemed to speed up.
At one of our family gatherings in October, a secret meeting was held by the men and they all pulled out of the gift-making experiment.
The women, none of whom had started making gifts, were not ready to give up however.
We loosened the rules even more and gift cards were once again fair game, but we all held the intention to try to make some part of the gift homemade.
In the next several weeks I got a small glimpse of what I’ve seen my graduate-student friends go through as they wrestle with dissertations.
I had bursts of inspiration, followed by weeks of creative drought, where I cursed the whole idea and Martha Stewart for making us think we all can and should try to make our own gifts.
I resigned myself to buying yet another gift-certificate, until one day a couple of weeks before Christmas an idea came to me.
Next thing I knew my kitchen table was an art studio and instead of just humoring my three-year-old by half-heartedly painting along with her, I set to work on a painting of my own – a watercolor for my mother, champion of any and all creative projects I’ve ever attempted.
As I finished the painting a few days before Christmas I realized what a gift this process had been for me.
My tackle box filled with art supplies, my faithful companion from long ago, is dust-free and once again in use.
Paintbrushes now sit in a jar on my kitchen windowsill awaiting the next wave of creative inspiration.
Yogurt containers, Styrofoam packaging, and plastic tops are once again treasured, rinsed and saved to be reused as paint pallets and I have reconnected with the feeling of deep joy that giving a gift from your Soul brings.
As we talk and knit, often finishing Christmas gifts that didn’t quite get done in time, we share stories of holiday preparations, shopping and gift-making.
In our constant quest to make holidays less stressful and more enjoyable for everyone, we also make plans for next year!
It was at one such gathering many years ago that we decided to “pull names” and only buy gifts for one person, instead of trying to get “a little something” for everyone in our large extended family.
For a while this was a great relief and a lot of fun. We picked names sometime in the fall and set to work creating something special for one person.
At some point, we decided to get birthdays under control as well by all keeping our Christmas person for the following year’s birthday.
For a while we were in a good groove and everyone seemed to be enjoying our simplified holiday exchanges, until somewhere along the way things started to shift.
Kids in the family (officially defined, much like dependants on health-insurance policies, as “up to age 21 or while a full-time undergraduate student”) came of age and the family circle expanded through marriage.
And then there was the question of boyfriends and girlfriends and whether or not to include them in the pool (i.e. would people date long enough to make it through the full Christmas-birthday cycle?).
Eventually things broke down and we pretty much all ended up exchanging gift cards – and not feeling all that great about it.
In hopes of saving us from another year of uninspired gift-card swapping, my sister started an e-mail “wish list” that we were to all add to and pass along.
We tried this for a couple of years with some success, but not everyone played along with giving ideas, and not everyone played along with buying from the “suggested gift list,” so this plan was eventually scrapped, which brings us to last year’s post-holiday review and this year’s holiday challenge – homemade gifts.
It seemed innocent enough: one homemade present and a full year to make it happen. And we all agreed that it didn’t have to be completely handmade.
The idea, once again, was to simplify the experience of Christmas gift-giving and prevent last-minute panic shopping by encouraging us to spend more time than money on presents.
The hope was that we would really think about the person receiving the gift and connect with that person in a way that a $50 gift card from Home Depot just can’t do.
In the weeks after Christmas, e-mails were exchanged, and ideas were flowing.
And then I’m not quite sure what happened. Spring rolled into summer and outdoor fun and parties and busyness.
Dreaming about homemade Christmas gifts, and much less doing anything about them, just kind of drifted away.
And then next thing we knew it was fall, and like it always does in September, time seemed to speed up.
At one of our family gatherings in October, a secret meeting was held by the men and they all pulled out of the gift-making experiment.
The women, none of whom had started making gifts, were not ready to give up however.
We loosened the rules even more and gift cards were once again fair game, but we all held the intention to try to make some part of the gift homemade.
In the next several weeks I got a small glimpse of what I’ve seen my graduate-student friends go through as they wrestle with dissertations.
I had bursts of inspiration, followed by weeks of creative drought, where I cursed the whole idea and Martha Stewart for making us think we all can and should try to make our own gifts.
I resigned myself to buying yet another gift-certificate, until one day a couple of weeks before Christmas an idea came to me.
Next thing I knew my kitchen table was an art studio and instead of just humoring my three-year-old by half-heartedly painting along with her, I set to work on a painting of my own – a watercolor for my mother, champion of any and all creative projects I’ve ever attempted.
As I finished the painting a few days before Christmas I realized what a gift this process had been for me.
My tackle box filled with art supplies, my faithful companion from long ago, is dust-free and once again in use.
Paintbrushes now sit in a jar on my kitchen windowsill awaiting the next wave of creative inspiration.
Yogurt containers, Styrofoam packaging, and plastic tops are once again treasured, rinsed and saved to be reused as paint pallets and I have reconnected with the feeling of deep joy that giving a gift from your Soul brings.
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