Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Christmas Gifts

In lieu of the gift exchange, I tried to come up with something we could share with one another to express both our love and appreciation for/of one another, and to celebrate the Nativity and Christmas season this year. I'll admit, my ideas are in their infancy as well, but perhaps as a family we can develop them into something fun and meaningful.

I started thinking of letter writing, and got the idea to write "love letter" to each family unit within the larger family. In the letter, I thought we could specifically address the members of that family, perhaps asking after each one, or sharing fond memories that we have had. An example of this is as follows:

"Dear Tristan and Elizabeth

Body/
...I was thinking recently about how much time we spent playing video games in the summers of 2007, 2008, and 2011, and how nice it was to spend that time with you, I hope there will be video games in heaven...
/Body

Closing"

As I thought about it more, it occurred to me that it might be too much to write 7 long letters. So perhaps we could all write a Advent/Christmas letter and post it to the blog. In the letter, we could still ask after one another, share fond memories from the past year, and maybe express our meditations, excitements, experiences in prayer etc. leading up to Christmas. We could share some of our New Year's resolutions (perhaps we could do this at the beginning of the Liturgical New Year), what we hope that be convicted of/reminded of this Christmas, share our prayer requests and intentions, etc.

That is all I have for now. Please feel free to edit, add to, or subtract from this idea, and soon enough I am sure we will have a great project.

Love,
Dan and Regina

8 comments:

  1. I have came up with the first edit/augment to this idea.

    How do people feel about an exchange of baked goods, where we send a package of our favorite home made snacks to 1 other family. This would simplify things a bit, and would probably cut down on cost. For the sake of convenience, everyone would send to the immediately young sibling, with the youngest sibling sending to Mom/Dad.

    Mom/Dad--> Holly
    Holly--> Sandy
    Sandy--> Heather
    Heather--> Andrew
    Andrew--> Dan
    Dan--> Tristan
    Tristan--> Mom and Dad (Maria and Anna)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like both the original idea and the baked goods idea. Mom, Dad, Maria and Anna, there is this great recipe for spinach and groat cookies I've been wanting to bake. I could even add candied chile peppers for a nice red/green Christmas color combination...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love these ideas's. I can have Ellie bake the cookies if lfe is to hectic for me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Spinach and groat cookies! I think we need to reverse the order. I like the baked goods idea.

    Dad

    ReplyDelete
  5. I like the idea of baked goods too. Simple, yet heartfelt =)

    ReplyDelete
  6. OK so are we doing the care package idea? I am in - I've started my baking already. So far Sandy, Tristan, Dan, Andrew, & Dad have all said they like the idea. Heather what about you?

    I am getting my package ready for Sandy right now.

    I also like the letter idea of posting a Christmas letter to the blog. Are we going to do that too?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am in on the care package exchange. Love you all!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I received a huge box of cookies from Holly today! Thanks Holly, we will all enjoy them!

    ReplyDelete