The best Christmas gift we can give our children? The memories we create
My 3-year-old son wants a chocolate bar and vanilla ice cream for Christmas.
No matter how many days or ways I ask the question, his answer doesn't change.
I wasn’t shocked by his simple culinary request since his lone birthday wish was a small bag of Skittles. But his sweet tooth certainly caused me to ponder how to make his incredibly short wish list into something special to celebrate Christmas morning.
I considered making a huge ice cream sundae bar with numerous toppings. I pondered buying several flavors and offering him a taste test to determine which brand offers the best vanilla ice cream.
Then I realized that I was completely overthinking it.
The boy wants ice cream, not every sweet treat I can find in the frozen section of the supermarket.
Like many parents, I tend to go overboard at the holidays to fulfill my boys’ holiday wishes. We can provide for them, so we do. They ask for a gift and we scour stores to find it, then frantically assemble 6,500 tiny pieces early on Christmas Day.
But more than anything, I need to remember to keep in simple.
My son doesn’t need a Klondike bar with the heaping side of freshly baked cookies, chocolate syrup and whipped cream.
My older son has selected the entire contents of a toy catalog that landed in our mailbox last month and will be sorely disappointed when each item doesn’t arrive on Christmas morning.
He doesn’t need a pile of new toys or a closet filled with designer clothes. This year, he will enjoy a drawing lesson with an uncle.
For years, we’ve tried to focus on gifting experiences as we do not need more items accumulating in our home. We prefer zoo and museum memberships, outings with family.
Our joint birthday celebration in the fall included a week exploring Acadia National Park in Maine with family. The boys loved scrambling over boulders, tossing rocks into the ocean and hunting for starfish and crabs along the shoreline with grandma, my aunt and uncle, who also took the boys paddling in a kayak. They're already talking about our next trip, and where they can hike on the upcoming outing.
Creating memories means so much more than purchasing items that in some cases are ignored or forgotten within days or weeks.
So on this Christmas morning, we will offer bowls of vanilla ice cream for breakfast.
Years from now, we’ll all recall the Christmas when we kicked off the holiday with ice cream.
Contact Victoria Freile at vfreile@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @vfreile and Instagram @vfreile. This coverage is only possible with support from our readers.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Christmas gifts for boys: A mother considers their lists, her options
