Christmas Q&A | Kid’s Gift Budgets and Santa

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I asked for Christmas questions and you guys came through in a big way! I’ve got Christmas questions out the wazoo. 🙂 I’ll try to answer as many as I can this month, and maybe some of them will end up being answered in my Christmas e-book.

Do you and Mr. FG set the same budget for gifts for each of your kids or do they get the same number of gifts or do you just buy each child one thing they really want?

-Kathy

I would say that we keep our spending right about the same for each kid (around $50 apiece), but if we really want to give a particular child something a little bit more expensive, we’ll sometimes spend more.

And if we feel like we’ve gotten enough stuff for a particular child and haven’t gotten to $50 yet (it’s happened quite a bit especially when our kids were really little), we don’t feel obligated to spend more.

When answering the budget question I’d like to get your opinion on a middle class parent having a $600 per child budget for Christmas? I thought it was high but maybe I’m over thinking it.

-Joyce

For us, that would definitely be high. While we could manage to save up that much for each kid (that’d be $2400!), we don’t feel like it’s necessary and we also would have to cut back on some of our other monetary goals to accomplish that (our van fund would seriously suffer).

Also, we don’t feel like our kids need $600 of stuff at Christmastime. We’d much prefer to teach them to be content with less and to think more about giving to people who aren’t so fortunate.

That’s us, though. Another family may very well be able to afford $600/kid and they may still be doing a great job of giving to the less fortunate, and of teaching their children to be content and generous. So, as long as that $600/kid family wasn’t complaining to me about not being able to pay their bills, it wouldn’t bother me much.

My question is how much of your $50/kid budget is brand new stuff and how much is second hand? I am trying to buy 2nd hand for my kids, but its hard.

-Karen

That depends on the year and the kid! We try to buy second-hand when its possible and when it’s un-cheezy (meaning that we try to find used things that are as good as the new versions).

Last year I bought Duplos for Zoe on e-bay, and Sonia got a ton of new-in-the-package bath goodies from Goodwill.

I also found some art supplies for them at Goodwill. We bought a good number of our kids’ presents brand new, though, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t have a handy-dandy new/used proportion for you!

I’d just suggest getting as many items as you can second-hand, and then not worrying about buying new for the rest of the gifts.

What should I do/say about Santa Claus? I distinctly remember being told he wasn’t real in kindergarten (too young!) and being very sad about it. As an adult, I don’t like the deception and being black, it kind of rubs me the wrong way, too. That said, I think I am going to tell my 2 year old about him and go along with the fantasy, but I was wondering what you think.

-Laura

Mr. FG and I have never “done” Santa Claus with our children mainly because we don’t feel comfortable telling them something that’s not true. We think it’s fun to pretend and tell stories and have make-believe, but only when it’s clear that we’re doing that, and aren’t passing off something as true when it’s not. Because of this we don’t tell them that that the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny are real either.

(An example to tie those two sentences together: When one of our children loses a tooth, we have them put it under their pillow so that the “tooth fairy” will come. But, all of our children know good and well that there is no such thing as the tooth fairy and that the person putting money under the pillow is a member of our household (usually me!). Because it’s fun, though, we keep playing the game. I took forever to get around to taking care of Lisey’s last tooth, and we joked about it. “I can’t imagine what in the world the tooth fairy has been doing. Maybe she’s on vacation!!” to which I replied, “I wish!”. 😉 We have silly fun with it even though our kids don’t believe the tooth fairy is real.)

We want to be very, very sure that our children can trust us implicitly, and we feel like we might be putting that at risk by telling them Santa is real and that Santa brings them presents.

In addition, we are not on board with the “Behave so that Santa will bring you presents!” sort of thing that some people do (Go to a mall at Christmastime and you’ll definitely hear this out of the mouth of a exasperated mom!). We want our children to behave year round, not just in December, and we want them to behave out of love for God, not love for presents.

And no matter how bad they are, we will still love them and give them presents (after all God sent Jesus, not because we were all so wonderful, but because He loves us).

I wonder: if one tells one child that Santa et al aren’t real, what does one tell them about talking with kids who do think they’re real?

-WilliamB

Though we’re firmly on the no-Santa end of things, we remind our children with great regularity that some children do think that Santa is real and that Santa brings them presents. And we tell them to never tell another child that Santa isn’t real.

So far, they’ve not ever blown the secret for any other kids…I think the closest they’ve come is telling our neighbor that Santa doesn’t bring presents to our house. The neighbor kid seemed to accept that without a problem, though.

Oh, and we try to teach our kids to have a gracious attitude towards families who do the Santa thing. We are confident in our decision about Santa, but this issue is not a hill to die on and definitely not something that should make us look down on other people. 🙂

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Readers, what are your thoughts on these Christmas-y topics?

(Just because Santa can tend to be such a hot topic, do remember to keep things calm in the comments. Shanks!)

Today’s 365 post: A 4-picture post