How often do you say "stewardship" and "Christmas" in the same sentence? Advent and Christmas present many stewardship teaching moments.
How does your family make decisions about how this holiday time will be spent? How does your family-or does your family-decide together how much money you will spend at Christmastime? This can be meaningful for any family unit of two or more people.
Deciding together how holiday time and money will be "invested" can bring families closer in several ways. First, every member is enriched when each voice is heard and respected. Also, the chance of individual disappointment decreases when each person has been part of the decision making and knows the framework of what to expect.
Spending Time Together
Some families spend special time together during Christmas holidays, time that will be multiplied in memories. The choice of activities will depend on the interests of family members, as well as on how much you choose or are able to spend. Stewardship? Yes! Stewardship of family time and togetherness.
When our daughters were small, we celebrated the 12 days of Christmas with 12 special family activities. To replace the Advent calendar that finished on Christmas Day, we made a Christmas banner with 12 loops of ribbon projecting through parallel holes in a row down the centre. The girls wrote 12 activities on small slips of paper and rolled them up into mini-scrolls, securing them randomly on our banner. Each morning's adventure was to open one of the little scrolls to learn what our activity would be for that day (or evening, if it was a parental workday). One day's activity might be to see a holiday movie or play a favourite game together, to work at the local food bank, or to make a surprise long-distance phone call to a friend or relative far away. Half the fun was generating the ideas together!
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Spending Money Together
Here is an idea for families who want to curb the greedy "I wants" at Christmas. The total amount of money available for the holidays is probably a parental decision based on your financial situation. Within the total amount, however, the whole family might participate in a mutual decision-making process to determine how much to spend in three areas:
- Family "outings" (holiday concert, sports event, movie, ski trip, etc.)
- Individual gifts
- Gifts for outreach (to help others).
The process needs to respectfully balance the expressed needs of each family member. Be ready with matter-of-fact, guiding questions-for example, "Would you rather see a Maple Leafs game together or have more presents?" (You may be surprised by the answers!)
After deciding what is available for individual gifts, a toy catalogue helps children "dream" about what they want for that amount of money. "If Santa had $100 to spend for every child, what would Santa bring you?" (This is great practice for their math; they soon realize there are choices to be made and it is a lot easier for Santa!). It is an early lesson in stewardship of money.
Family gifts for outreach are an important part of Christmas stewardship. If this is your first year for this meaningful part of celebrating Christmas, choose a figure like 10 percent of the total amount the family will be spending. Ten percent of $1,000, for instance, would be $100 to be spent for White Gifts, for an "adopted" family at Christmas, or for however your family chooses together to give to others. In successive years, increase this percentage a step each year.
In one family, the grandparents take their grandchildren to visit several outreach ministries at holiday time. Afterward, the children help the grandparents decide to which agencies they will send a Christmas cheque.
Spending Time and Money Together
You will have noticed by now that many of the examples of spending time together also involve money, and vice versa. Stewardship is like that-interconnected with all that we are and have and do-at Christmas or any time!
Barbara Fullerton, Stewardship Development Office
United Church of Canada
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