Ideas for Santa's Helpers

For most of her life Leace never really completely trusted Santa, the Easter Bunny, and especially not the Tooth Fairy (she said that anyone who wasn't your mom or dad coming into your room at night to take your teeth was just creepy). Part of this was probably because we’d been hesitant to completely confirm any of these legends and decided overall to handle it by mostly just avoiding any of the topics of belief. Anyways I still remember the Easter morning she demanded that we fess up the truth about the Easter Bunny and all the rest. We explained that in our house we focus on the spirit of the holidays instead of worrying so much about bunnies and big guys in red. As part of the consolation package that Christmas she got to be Santa’s helper and help fill the stockings.

She did really pretty well with understanding that she wasn’t allowed to ruin the belief of others – until Eddy was about 7. She felt it her big sister obligation to explain everything to him. Thankfully however, whatever she ended up saying he took it well and so that year it was his turn to be Santa’s helper with the stockings.

Last year that left me trying to decide how we would do stockings. I decided that all of the Santa’s helpers would swap and have a set amount of money to fill someone else’s stocking. It was fun and worked out pretty well. It did end up not being so secret by the time Christmas came but overall everyone ended up pretty satisfied on both the giving and receiving end of things.

This year Leace asked if we could change it up a bit. I gave her and Eddy a small amount of money they could spend on every other person in the family for stocking stuffers. Then we headed off to one of Leace’s favorite stores – the Dollar Tree. At first Eddy was a little hesitant but even he realized he could handle the task on his own and they each grabbed a basket and to shopping they went. Both kids really enjoyed being able to go out on their own in the store picking out things for everyone.

I know that everyone likes to do things their own way and I’m sure there’s lots of great ways to handle this (I’d love to hear any ideas that people have!) but I just wanted to share both of these ways since they have been so much fun for us. Seeing them take part in being able to pick out presents for each other has been much more fun than just taking care of it all for them. They not only get the chance to serve but get the rewards of growing up and taking on the good parts of responsibility.