A Garland of Experiences

Advent is swiftly approaching and Christmas decorations are beginning to spring up.  Personally, I love it.  Its not that I want to be rushed to celebrate Christmas sooner, but rather that I like to enjoy the holiday season for as long as possible.  There is so much richness to be enjoyed if we can remember to slow down and savor the moments shared with the ones we love.

Like most children, mine begin asking how many days there are until Christmas as soon as the turkey is off of the Thanksgiving table.  This is one of the reasons I love Advent calendars.  Although I suppose I have loved them since I was a child and my mother made one for my brothers and me.  An advent calendar gives a visual representation of time and also gives the children (and the parents) a little something special to look forward to each day.  Most are made of paper and a small window is opened each day to reveal a tiny image.  The one I had growing up was a large felt tree with 25 felt ornaments which were placed on it one by one.  My two brothers and I took turns placing an ornament on the tree each day, and this simple gesture was something to which we all looked forward.  We now take turns passing this family treasure from one sibling to another so we can each share it with our own children.

In the last few years I have noticed a lot of Advent garlands.  Different from the calendars, they are designed not only to represent the days of Advent, but also typically have pockets so that one may place a small gift in each.  Advent garlands are beautiful, but the idea of placing a gift in each pocket gives me pause for a couple of reasons.  First, who has the money (and the wealth of ideas?) to equip the garland with twenty-four little gifts, and then still have something left over on Christmas morning?  Of course, one could opt for inexpensive little plastic trinkets, but then you’ll have twenty five little plastic trinkets, which will inevitably end up going into the landfill (or into the family pet).  I also don’t like planting the seed that Christmas is all about receiving things.  So, last year I posed the question to friends: 

How about an Advent garland full of experiences rather than gifts? 

We came up with a wonderful list of experiences, each of which could be placed on a little note card in each pocket of an Advent garland.  You may need to really plan out which experiences fall on which days (weekday versus weekend, for example), as some require more of a time commitment than others.  I actually held our stash of cards aside and chose one each night to place in the pocket for the next day.  A couple of small handmade or well chosen gifts or bits of candy can be interspersed as well, but the overall sentiment behind this kind of garland is more about giving and spending time together than about receiving a gift.  

Here is the list my friends and I created:  

Have a treasure hunt to your stash of Christmas books (make a treasure map for the children to follow)

Do something kind for the Earth today

Do something kind for an animal today

Do something kind for another person today

Tonight we will have your favorite dinner

Wear your pajamas and have breakfast for dinner

Go outside and look at the stars after dinner

Write a letter to Santa

Call someone and tell them you love them

Draw a picture for a friend or family member 

Write a letter to a friend or family member who lives far away

Bring some food, clothing or toys to a shelter

Buy a toy for a child less fortunate

Bake cookies

Visit a new playground

Hike in a new location

Have special alone time with Mom/Dad/Grandma/Grandpa...

Make a Christmas gift for someone

Go to the Children’s Museum

Bring cookies to local community workers (police, fire department...)

Choose a friend to have over for a play date

Go to the library to choose some Christmas books

Have a scavenger hunt in your home for items red and green

Make a list of things for which you are thankful

Visit an elderly neighbor

Go caroling

Decorate the tree/Pick out a tree

Make ornaments

Invite a neighbor to dinner

Make some reindeer food (granola, bird seed, nuts, seeds - the birds like it too)

I welcome you to add more ideas in the comments below!  Have fun!

{Pictured is a simple garland I made last year from craft paper.}

Is It Time to Conquer Mt. Toy?

Those who know me well, know that I do not buy a lot of toys for my children.  The ones that I do buy are usually deliberate and well considered purchases.  Sure, we have a few plastic toys and some random little bits and pieces a good friend of mine calls “giblets”, but for the most part our toys are made of natural materials, are simple, and are open ended for imaginative play. (This, coupled with limited television viewing and no microwave has led my older brother to refer to our house as “Amish Country”).

For the most part I try to save toy purchases for special occasions - birthdays, Christmas, Easter.  Since I have a mild aversion to toys that light up, make (battery assisted) noise and “do” things (as in "what does it do" as opposed to "what can I do with it?"), I am left with very few actual, physical stores where the kind of toys I value can be found.  Let’s face it, real toy stores (which I will define as places wherein you cannot pick up cat litter, bras and/or hunting rifles with your toy purchase) are sadly a dying breed. Therefore, I plan ahead (okay way ahead, because the truth is I love toys) and I shop online.  My point is I consider myself to be a very mindful, selective purchaser of toys.  Do I sound smug about my simple, uncluttered Waldorf-inspired playroom full of carefully selected toys?  Well, here is what it looked like yesterday -

Keep in mind this angle does not catch the actual toy shelves.  As I looked around at the toy carnage in front of me I thought to myself, “Where did all this stuff come from anyway?  Do they need this much stuff?  Would they miss it if it were gone, or at least pared down?”  Before I answer those questions let me veer off a bit and flash back to a time when I decided to donate some of my then two and a half year old’s toys to The Salvation Army.  One item was a stuffed octopus.  She barely ever paid attention to this thing, I promise you.  Well, a few months passed and one day she asked me if I knew where her octopus was.  At first, I feigned ignorance.  “Hmm, I’m not sure,” I would say (don’t judge me, it was sort of true).  After she asked me about it every day for a week, I finally relented and told her the whole truth.  I had given it away.  Well let me tell you, she still brings it up three years later.  My husband has joked that he can imagine her giving a speech as the high school valedictorian and saying, “If only my octopus were here with me to share this moment.”  

Back to present - I surveyed this mess of toys, grabbed some bags and began to collect toys that I thought might not be immediately missed. How many pieces of play food do they need? How many different outfits for dolls? How many wooden animals?  I filled three bags with toys.  Three bags of superfluous toys from our simple (so I thought), uncluttered (uh-huh), Waldorf inspired playroom.  I put them upstairs, on hold, waiting to see if anything would be missed (I felt this toy purgatory was a necessary precaution so as not to repeat the “octopus incident”).  Once I had cleared out the clutter,  I rearranged the remaining toys to add some interest (ever notice how moving a toy from one location to another often makes it interesting again?) and to make the omissions less obvious, and voila -  I held my breath waiting for the alarmed cries of children who have been robbed.  Guess what?  The children didn’t even seem to notice. They played contentedly in their newly simplified space, and there was far less to clean up!  How long should I keep the toys in Purgatory?  I think this time around I will let my daughters know that the toys are being given away, and let them each reclaim one toy from the bunch before they go.  I think its important for them to take part in the spirit of sharing our good fortune (or stuffed octopuses) with others.

In the spirit of “less is more” I invite you to pare down your child(ren)’s “Toy Mount Everest.”  Let us know how it turns out.  Here’s a gem for you if you are wondering what to keep (all in good fun!):  

“The Five Best Toys of All Time”