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Most of you know I'm a working Santa. It's a job I love. People seem to expect the kids to be horrors, but in fact they're mostly pretty great. But the problem is the inequality.Every year I'll get children through who want a single item for Christmas - a doll, or a game, or a truck - and I'll get the ones with lists that would challenge the carrying capacity of a Mack truck. The thing is, this often reflects their expectations of what they'll get for Christmas.
And of course, the kids are told that Father Christmas has brought most of their presents.
So after Christmas, when the kids are talking about what they got, you end up with one child who got a single small gift from St. Nick, while another talks about their new trampoline, gaming system, bike, remote controlled toy... all of which are also presents from Santa.
While that's lovely for those that get lots, it leaves any number of other children regarding their one or two gifts, and wondering why Santa doesn't like them as much. And that's without taking into account the children who won't get any presents at Christmas.
I'm not saying that if you can afford to buy your child lots of presents, and you want to, that you shouldn't. And I'm not asking everyone to go out and buy a raft-load of toys for the various charities that pass them on to the people who can't afford to buy things for their children, though that'd be nice.
All I'm asking people to do is to just pick one, not the biggest, or most expensive, and say that's the special gift that Santa has brought for them. If you want, tell them that you bought the other presents, and asked Father Christmas to deliver them especially, but please, don't let them think that every parcel is a personal gift to them from St. Nick.
Chances are it won't make that much difference to your child, but after Christmas it will hopefully help any number of other kids feel like Santa isn't playing favourites, or wondering why he doesn't like them.
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My parents would also do the stocking filler presents, to make it look like we had lots. This was chocolates, lollies, and cheapy toys from Cost Plus like flashing swords, water pistols etc.
There were some years when we only got the cheapy presents from WA Salvage but we were happy as our stockings were full of things we could play with all day. My parents who were both educators explained to me since that they felt it more constructive for us to have a variety of things we could share and go between all day, rather than getting into fights about one item, or getting bored with one game.
But we considered the fact that our stockings were full and that Santa had brought us gifts to be the real reward. As kids don't have a concept of monetory value, they're not going to appreciate one big gift, they'll remember lots of scmall gifts much more. I have no problem that my parents may have spent no more than $50 on us each some years, but we had fun, and that's what Christmas was all about. It wasn't about trying to score anything big, it was about having fun.
It's a bit fraudulant of particularly older kids that they tell their less well off friends that Santa brought them an Xbox.
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Lex and I were just playing with his wooden blocks. Halfway through, we each picked up a long one, held it to our ears like a telephone, and had a conversation.
Expensive toys, especially expensive toys that market themselves as educational, are rarely that good. We had Lex liking several verses of Old McDonald's farm, then someone gave him an electronic stuffed cow that promoted itself as educational - it sang one verse of Old McDonald, the cow one. After that, it took ages to get Lex to want any verse that wasn't the cow one.
Sorry, that's all a bit random, but yeah, a mix of assorted small and interesting things are much better than a couple of big presents.
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Also, these electronic toys that claim to give you feedback from actions, are only just an electronic feedback. They don't teach kids things like pressure, amount of force to put on something. They also don't teach kids to explore, because there are never any unintended consequences of use.
As such, a toy whereby you just press a button, has far less things to explore.
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I haven't actually said in the past that any presents were 'from Santa', she's only just getting the concept of Santa now. I'll probably not specifically say who the presents under the tree are from, except the ones from people other than me -family etc :)
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But I suspect Puggle is going to read something over my shoulder really soon now, and the gig will be up for him:-)
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Actually, that's not entirely true... He usually gives the family a present. Typically games (Stacrobats and Make'n'break were both Santa presents), although some years he's given us DVDs (Shaun the Sheep last year:-) ).
The 'big' presents come from us:-) (Actually, the big presents usually come from one set of grandparents...)
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