I like to think of myself as the Mack Daddy of merriment when it comes to Christmas -the Super Bowl of all holidays. Not to brag, but I know my way around the bottom of a tree. However, this year my wife is challenging my gift-giving abilities with a disagreement over the number of gifts that are appropriate for an infant.
My wife and I made our way down to the basement the other night to sort through the bags and bags of holiday gifts we had been gathering over the past couple of months. We were elf-deep in presents that would soon be wrapped and slid under the tree, just waiting to bring a little materialistic holiday joy to our family members.
As we started sorting through the gifts for our two kiddos, my wife noticed that we had way more presents for our 4-year-old son, than we did for our new little candy cane, daughter, who, let me remind you, is only 7 months old. So wifey pulled out her little gingerbread man-covered notepad, where she’s been keeping track of gifts, and made a scribble indicating we needed to go shopping for more items for our daughter.
Then came the lecture: we needed to keep things equal. We didn’t want to show favoritism.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, baby,” I exclaimed. “Pump those brakes, St. Nick - do we really need to make things equal this year?” Personally, I don’t think we need to heat up those credit cards any more than we already have. Our adorable little blob (and I mean that in the most sincere way) doesn’t really know what’s going on. She would be just as happy with a shoebox filled with tissue paper this year. Or here’s a great idea: let’s just wrap up some of the toys she already has and give them to her! She’ll never know the difference. Let’s be honest, we’ll probably spend more time pulling wrapping paper out of her mouth this Christmas than playing with new baby toys.
I hope I’m not sounding like a big ol’ Scrooge here, but I’m not fully convinced that spending a ton of money on a 7-month-old for Christmas is very practical. We presented this topic on the morning show, and a flood of listener calls came in agreeing with me! Ha ha! Yes, we do need to show our son the joy of giving and that we love his little sis just as much as him, but I see no reason why we can’t spend $10 on a box of baby food, wrap it up, and slide it over to her on Christmas morning. It would be a nice, practical gift from us that we’ll use anyway, and Ho Ho Ho, she gets a nice new, state-of-the-art box to play with! We’ll score a couple of great Christmas morning photos of her enjoying her strained peas and sweet potatoes, and we won’t be breaking the bank doing so.
Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a couple of ounces of delicious prunes and a nice, full diaper.
Photography credit: Jeremy Padgett
