Welcome to 2 days before Christmas! For many of us, that means that our vacations have begun (or are about to)! Hooray! It also means that many parents are getting close to the one huge day of gluttony that is December 25. It means a rest from requests: “Can I have a puppy for Christmas?”. It means plenty of gleeful shouts and some disappointment when they discover that the dog is out of the question. The end of the year brings many other thoughts for parents as well. Charitable giving increases by about 1200% (caveat, I made up that number) in the last few days of the year. We get our giving in before tax time right after we give so much to our kids. Let’s introduce the giving to them as well!

There’s plenty of talk about gift giving from kids to friends and family, but why not also introduce the idea of gift giving to strangers?

Get one, give one.

My daughter is just 2 months old and already some lovely Christmas presents have been bestowed upon her. My husband and I are not getting her anything this year, but once she’s a couple of years older, we fully plan on implementing the Get One, Give One idea. Since Christmas tends to be an orgy of gifts and since kids seem to be the focus of this orgy more than adults, we are going to introduce the idea of giving older toys and goodies away to other kids. When she receives a present, she will need to choose something from her own stash to be given away. This way we’ll be stressing the idea of donation and reuse as well as keeping our house from getting inundated with toys. Win-win! An eye for an eye! A gift for a gift!

As I’ve said before, giving the gift of gratitude and the gift of giving (!) are really the best parts of the holiday season. As we grow we tend to learn this, but our children often forget or are not taught what a joy giving can be. If it’s a regular part of their holiday and growing experience, maybe they’ll learn to appreciate it more quickly and share in even more joy during the holidays.

Maybe you can start with a smaller ratio this year. You could talk about giving 5 things away or one thing for every year of age of your child. It doesn’t matter the number. As with our charitable giving, we give what we can. So should it be for our kids. Let them give what they can and help make the holidays happy for your family and for other families as well!

Happy Holidays!