Of Gifts and Birthdays by Konnie Enos

My oldest posted yesterday about the small number of gifts under her Christmas tree, and why they weren’t doing more. She mentioned what Christmas was like growing up, with the effort I put into gift-giving. Which got me thinking about what Christmas was like for me growing up.

Some years, we were lucky if there was anything under the tree or in our stockings. In others, it took us hours to open everything. The big difference was well, Momma couldn’t provide as much as Dad could. There were reasons for this, none of which was Dad being a deadbeat dad. He did all he could. It's just things were better financially the years we lived with him.

Anyway, I never wanted my kids to feel those lean years. I tried so hard.

I scrimped all year, so I’d have some money for gifts. Some years, that even worked. For other years, I pulled together scraps of cloth and yarn and made doll blankets for my girls. One year I put together a simple picture book with construction paper, printer paper, my rough drawings, and a poem I wrote. When I had money, I spent most of it at thrift stores. And I found charities, even Toys for Tots, to sign up for, just to make sure they had something.

One year, I’d managed to sign up for Toys for Tots, made them something (the book), and saved some money for Christmas. On top of Toys for Tots giving us tons, our congregation provided us with a bunch too. It was probably our biggest Christmas.

I remember that year, I was told I could only sign up the kids I already had for Toys for Tots, not the one I was expecting near Christmas. When it came time to pick up what they had for us, my baby was a few days old. They let me pick up a couple of small things for him too because he’d been born a couple of weeks earlier than expected.

Even after our finances became, well, steady, and putting money aside each month for gifts was possible, we’d frequently run into unplanned financial strains, like car repairs. Or replacing broken appliances. The help I sought and some that just found us was always a blessing.

One thing I can say is that my methods of gift-giving have changed over the years. One, I no longer look for charities to help. My kids are adults now, and we have a steady income so I can usually save enough for Christmas. (Usually, baring unforeseen events like replacing appliances or major repairs on expensive items, like cars, or central air conditioning systems.)

There are other changes too.

I used to aim to spend the same amount on everyone. This could end up with one person getting a big stack of less expensive gifts and another getting only one or two more expensive ones.

Then I tried spreading the money out over three or four gifts each. This didn’t allow for nicer gifts but at least everyone was getting the same number. This method also made it difficult to find enough ideas for gifts for everyone.

Then I found the suggestion to get each person exactly three gifts, something they could use (such as clothes), something to read (yes, a book), and something fun.

I tried it for one year. Two family members (who shall remain nameless) complained about the books (for different reasons). I seem to recall one or two (or maybe three) objecting to my choice of useful things (the clothes).

I dropped that idea quickly.

Now I aim for one or two gifts each and try to find things the recipient will appreciate. (And that can be hard with the guys in our family.) To keep in mind my limited funds, I have a price range for each gift. Some I might go over a bit, but others I go under, so I don’t end up not having enough gifts for everyone.

Anyway, we aren’t taking several hours just opening gifts. Hopefully, everyone is getting things they like. (No more complaints.) And on the plus side, I don’t have to spend days, or all night on Christmas Eve, wrapping gifts. This year I finished shopping and had wrapped all but the pet gifts, before Thanksgiving, which is my goal. I can spend December focusing on other things. Like the reason we celebrate Christmas.

I didn’t know I’d be spending this month isolating with covid but at least I don’t have to worry about what I still need to do for Christmas while I’m recuperating. And I’m still remembering that Anthony will be 24 tomorrow.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Of Habits, Hardships and Gifts by Konnie Enos

If you know me at all, you know that I plan ahead for any gift-giving events. I carefully budget each month so that I know I’ll have enough money for Christmas and still cover all birthdays then I start shopping for said gifts early.

Royce’s birthday is May 1^st and it’s not unusual for me to get both his birthday present and his Christmas gifts for the year by the end of February. Then I can focus on the next birthday I need gifts for. In this case, it’s ours. I generally manage to figure out what I’m getting Bonnie by the end of May and usually ship it to her in mid-June.

After that, I focus on my three daughters. First Kristina whose birthday is in August, then I quickly do Melinda and Clarissa. However, since I have to ship things to Clarissa, that also means I’m getting birthday and Christmas gifts for both my grandbabies and my son-in-law at the same time. I usually barely manage to ship that out just before hers, and my youngest grandbabies birthday in October.

By then I’ve done all necessary gift shopping for the year for everyone except Tony, Jerry, and our pets. But it’s already November and I hate shopping of any kind between Thanksgiving and Christmas (though admittedly online shopping now makes this less of a bother).

Though it isn’t unusual for me to be completely done with my gift shopping for the year by mid-November, and this covers birthdays that are in January and March of the next year (Jerry and oldest grandbaby).

This last year I wasn’t as proactive as I usually am and didn’t get Christmas gifts for Royce until I was also getting gifts for Jerry and Tony. I’d put off a great deal of my Christmas shopping because, for one reason or another, we’d had to use the money I was setting aside for gifts on other important things. I postponed all my gift buying as late as possible and got far fewer gifts for lack of money. I even made a few simply because I had yarn but not enough money.

This year, I started the year thinking more caution was called for because I’m not sure that some new catastrophe won’t befall our finances again. I’m thinking our heating issue also affects our air conditioning system and it’s going to be non-functional too. Meaning my gift money may well go toward either repairing our system or finding a temporary solution for the air conditioning as well, and we know fans won’t completely deal with it. So we’re thinking we might need a couple of portable air conditioners.

I’ve also had other things on my mind. Like prices going up for everything and we have a fixed income. Yes, we did just get a sizeable COLA but it’s based on past increases and since the costs are still rising, it certainly isn’t even keeping up with things. So while I’ve been setting the money aside for gifts, I’ve been wondering if I’m even going to be able to get Christmas gifts again this year.

However, I don’t spend that much on birthday gifts so I was reminding myself to figure out a gift for Royce. I just never got it done.

Last week, yeah late March, I realized it was already April and I had not even browsed for a gift to get Royce yet. I needed some ideas so I finally had a conversation with him about it. Even then I still postponed shopping for a few more days.

When I finally did get on Amazon, I figured I could also get stuff for Bonnie’s yearly gift box so hopefully, I could get it to her well in advance of our birthday. And it took me a while to figure out what I was getting.

After placing the order, I promptly forgot about it in favor of focusing on everything else on my to-do list. Because I’d so completely put it out of my mind, I was surprised when an Amazon package arrived for me on Monday.

Royce dropped it on my bed beside me and I asked him what it was. I then asked him to open it for me but he was already walking out the door and refused to turn back around to open it. It’s a good thing because that’s about when I realized his birthday present was probably in that box.

I got opened about when Royce decided he would help me with opening it and returned. I had to tell him what I assumed was in there and that he needed to leave again.

Yes, his gift was in the box.

Now I have some wrapping to do.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.