This year, I really wanted to make an effort to help the children focus on the joy of giving over the fun of receiving.  We had a wonderful opportunity to minister to a family in need through our church.  We signed up to prepare a holiday gift basket for a family dealing with AIDS and purchase Christmas gifts for their little girl.  Despite my earnest efforts to include the children, in actuality it was a grueling (from a child's perspective) 2-hr marathon trip to Target.   The only one remotely interested in selecting gifts for the little girl  was my eldest daughter.   I was trying to get all the various items on the list I'd been given and simultaneously keep 6 energetic and obviously "not-in-school" children from becoming a spectacle.  We did pretty well until we got to the cards.  The younger ones were grabbing the ones that make sounds when you open them.  The older ones were reading the funny ones out loud and getting everyone to laugh.  I was continuously alternating between trying to put the cards back in the right spot, keep Jake from climbing up the card display to reach the ones at the top, quiet the 4-week old baby, keep Rebekah from climbing out of the shopping cart, laughing at the funny cards, and trying to steer the children clear of the inappropriate ones.  Who knew there could be so many off-color Christmas cards, of all things?  At some point, I realized that everyone who walked by us was staring, and that I had not been successful in being a non-spectacle.  Oh well!  By then, I was laughing too hard to care.

     So, phase one of our project complete, I tried to include the children's help in wrapping.  It didn't really turn out to be practical.  We had a lot of other things going on.  I wound up doing most of the wrapping myself.  I did have some "help" unwrapping though.  Once while I was doing read-alouds with the older children, I was amazed at how nicely Rebekah was playing quietly in her room.  I should've known better.  By the time it finally dawned on me that she was likely up to no good and I ought to check on her, she had already carried not just one, but two pair of scissors upstairs and had attempted to cut into the cardboard boxes of three different presents.  Fortunately, I intervened before the damage was totally irreparable.  So much for instilling the joy of giving in my 2-year-old!  Strike one.

     I decided I hadn't really accomplished my objective of getting the children excited about giving to others.  I discussed with my husband an idea I had heard about last year of having the children draw each other's names and buy for that child.  We ruled it out based on the inefficiencies of shopping individually with the children, not wanting to pressure them into "choosing" the gifts we already had in mind, and some other details.  Strike two.

     The week before Christmas, the children came home from AWANA each with a bag of small gifts.  I wasn't sure what it was all about.  I hadn't been attending AWANA since Mary Faith's birth, so I was out of the loop.  There were many other things going on, so we stuffed the bags in the top of the entry hall closet, and I forgot about them.  (We didn't put any gifts under the tree this year until the children were safely tucked in bed on Christmas Eve, on account of the Mistress of Mischief.  It was also a weak attempt to imply that "Santa" delivered them, though I'm a horrible liar/pretender and my children have never really believed the whole Santa thing.  I don't consider that a bad thing though.  I was always a Santa-skeptic as a child too.  But, I digress.)  Christmas Eve, the children excitedly asked for their bags and eagerly made tags and wrote names on gifts and placed them under the tree.  Apparently, AWANA had allowed them use the "shares"  they earn for reciting their memory verses to purchase gifts for family members.  Then, some wonderful volunteers must have spent hours wrapping and numbering everything the children ordered. 

     So, here comes my favorite part!  Christmas morning, the children excitedly exchanged the gifts they had bought for each other with their own "money".  It was wonderful to see how they picked out things they thought each person would like.  It was obvious they had put some thought into someone else's preferences.  They were very excited about seeing their siblings open the gifts they had picked out.  Several times, the receiver hugged the giver and gave genuine and unprompted thanks.  I got some scented candles from the children.  When I burn them, our home fills with a sweet fragrance the way my heart was filled on Christmas morning.  In the end, it wasn't as a result of any of my plans or efforts that the children experienced the true joy of giving.  In fact, I did absolutely nothing--that was God's gift to me.  Homerun!