Happy Holidays!! It is that time of year again! The hustle and bustle of christmas shopping, card writing, and present wrapping! Let’s not forget one of the most important traditions…. Letters to Santa! But this holiday is more than toys, and things bought from a store. I want my kids to know the reason for the season. So aside from scripture stories each night, and acts of service. I wondered how can I make the letters to Santa special? I came up with a solution!
Keep reading there is a free printable at the end!!
With 8 kids, just getting letters done to Santa is a fun but noisy experience. Let’s be honest, everything is noisy with 8 kids. haha and that is okay! Noisy is good! It means we are all together! We try to do letters around the beginning of December. But, there have been years when it is almost the week before the big guy comes,when we get them done and I just know those poor elves are running around trying to get everything, that is when Amazon is Santas friend.. and my friend too! I suggest for your sake of mind and the elves do it earlier than later! Who doesn’t love Amazon when you have lots of gifts to get and either lots of kiddos or little time! This year Amazon has helped me get almost all my shopping done, since I am stuck healing…and I will admit I love getting packages, still fun even when it is for others!
Making it special…
In our home, we do the five gifts. Something we wear, something we need, something we want and something we read. We also added something to experience. We added that because we want to create memories of doing things, not just getting things. SIDENOTE: if you get your four oldest tickets to a lazer tag game,please have them wear mouth guards. Seriously! Last year Heston (9) and the others were able to go the the lazer tag, and while there, an older kid was not watching his gun and hit Heston in the mouth. He knocked out over 2/3 of Hestons front tooth, a root canal and a cap later his tooth is fixed. SO protect their teeth…. back to letters to Santa. But seriously Mouth guards!
So we use the five gifts, wear, read, want, need and experience, and we as parents pick those out. Santa gets the kids one gift. He picks one out of the whole letter and for us that is perfect! You may have Santa do it a different way.
I wanted to make the letters more special and I was thinking of how can I do that. I had it! What was our gift that year? There is so much more to the season than receiving and I wanted my children to do their part.
We also always have cookies when we write letters, this year it was a fancy cookies called le chips ahoy…. hey it works! They still loved it!
We added our gift we were giving that year!
We are Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, you can find more about us here. So as members, I wanted our gift to be to our Heavenly Father. For those who don’t believe in God, You could decide what your gift to the world will be. We all want the world to be a better place and by thinking about what we can give, it can be! I think it is never too early to teach children they can make a difference by doing their part.
Some of my kids responses this year were:
Being nicer to my family
Listening to my parents
Being more patient with each other
Paying my tithing and saying my prayers
Making new friends
Their responses were sweet and heartfelt. That is what made a simple letter to santa, more special. Thinking about what they can give. I purposely put that at the end of the letter. I wanted to end their letter writing thinking about and deciding what can they do. Not just dreaming about what gift they can get. We also talked about how can we give that gift and what we can do to share that.
Can I just add, I love that Heston is wearing his football gloves, he got those for his birthday and he wears them all the time, it seriously makes me smile!
There is a free printable! Both letters to Santa!
One with a gift to the world and one with a gift to The Lord. We love the letter and use it each year!
We also have the kids color a picture to Santa on the back, we make photo copies of the letters and send those off to Santa, so I can keep the original in their memory box! We love looking back at all the letters when we are decorating the tree.
I have been recovering from my big surgery, you can read about that here. PEOPLE it has been so hard! I seriously have done almost all shopping from home. Thank heavens for Amazon, truly. It has been hard to sit and relax and oh my word what I would not give right now to just deep clean for a few hours. There is a huge difference in how a kid sweeps the floor and a mom sweeps a floor…. only 4 weeks left… crumbs don’t matter….. only 4 weeks left… I can do this! So keep those sweet, uplifting thoughts and prayers coming my way and THANK YOU!!
So Christmas is almost here! Get those letters to Santa out! Make them a little more special by thinking of what you can give for the upcoming year!
What are your favorite traditions writing letters to Santa? Any thing you do each year?
Smile book:
Mike and I will be married 19 years next week! WHAT!
We have the saddest live tree but it is so cute, because it is so sad.haha
Hink is talking in almost complete sentences.
Hink blesses Uncle John in every prayer but he grunts his name so it sounds like ghhhhhnnnn it is hilarious!
