No Money for Christmas and Relationship

In a time when Christmas sales of electronic gadgets and toys are soaring, how do you show love and generosity to the ones you love when you cannot buy expensive gifts? My first thought is to go back to the simple "Little House on the Prairie" days. To see the children excited over gifts of barrettes and ribbons makes us realize how much commercialism has influenced our way of equating the money value of a gift to the the measure of love we have for each other.

The T.V. commercial, "Every kiss begins with Kay" implies that the cost of the gift tells how much the giver loves the recipient. Some of our best Christmases have been when we had little money. One year each person was to give the person whose name they drew something they owned that they valued. The gifts brought tears and hugs.

Our daughter gave her brother the seven books of Narnia she treasured and had collected one by one. He knew how much she valued those books.  From her rock collection one of our daughters gave me a beautiful green malachite which I knew was her favorite rock. Love filled our living room as we exchanged gifts.

Feel free to click comment and share some of your Christmas stories of love when money was not the measure. I will post them.