As I sat with my kids the other day and asked them to finish the sentence, “My favorite thing about Christmas is…”, I was shocked yet, overjoyed to hear them say that a well thought out tradition we had started was now their favorite thing about Christmas.
It was a few Christmases back when I happened to stumble upon a few velvet boxes that were on clearance. They looked just like what I imagined that the wise men brought their gifts to baby Jesus in. I just couldn’t pass them up, yet I had to get my creative juices flowing to figure out how to use them. They were too good to just sit and collect dust as a decoration.
Those bargain boxes began what has become the tradition that my children look forward to the most. Instead of stockings from Santa, we place the velvet boxes on the fireplace and throughout the Christmas season, my children fill their box with their gifts for Jesus. The gifts range from money to treasured trinkets to pieces of artwork. The sky is the limit with their boxes–sometimes even the things they make do not fit in their box, but we work it out.
On Christmas morning, our children wake up to find that their offerings are gone and have now been replaced by a birthday candle (for the cake on Christmas day) and a letter from Jesus. Those notes are written by my husband and I late on Christmas Eve from Jesus’ perspective. In a perfect world, we’d have them done earlier, but…well, it’s crazy here at Christmas! So we write these letters about each of them and try to focus on things that we see improved over the last year or maybe things we’d like to see cultivated in their lives. We try to have our emphasis be on character, not just things they’ve accomplished like, “You are a good soccer player.” We want to reinforce who they are as a person, not just what skills they possess. I have saved each one of those letters and the “gifts” they have given, because as they grow older, I want them to have a record of how we felt about them and to see how their offerings matured as they got older.
It’s obvious to me that those simple, velvet boxes have become true treasure boxes to my children, but I cannot wait for them to grow older, read the letters from years past and truly grasp what a treasure those letters and boxes are and then in turn to realize that they–my children–are the true treasure.
such a beautiful idea. so much better than stockings…