Hey guys, my name is Danny Dumas and this is the Earn Your Title Podcast. Today we're talking about Christmas. Yeah, Christmas. It's coming up, believe it or not. It will be here before you even blink. And I'm going to talk to you about giving specifically for Christmas. I think as dads, I really want my kids to have a good Christmas. I love Christmas. I'll be honest with you. Now, I'm not a big decorator. I don't put up a bunch of lights.
I actually just put those, you know, like the laser light thing, the one, the pod that shoots like a billion lights at the house. I stick it in the ground and after Thanksgiving, I turn it on and I turn it off the day after Christmas and I yank it out of the ground. I don't put up lights, but I do love Christmas. And my love language is gift giving. I speak that language. That's what I really get excited about, finding the right gifts.
And it's very easy for me to go overboard and like want to get this and this and this, because I see it and I get excited to give things. Like that is how I show love is by gift giving. And we've been doing Christmas with kids for 15 years. And me and my wife, I think we have a good system because I want my kids to enjoy Christmas. I want them to enjoy the gifts, but I don't want them to be spoiled.
I don't want them to, you know, I had a friend, he told me that his kid would complain about, it was a new Xbox or PlayStation because it wasn't the right model or something. And he literally took it back. Or no, he took it to somebody else. Christmas morning. They got the package and drove it to another kid's house that didn't have much and they said here Merry Christmas and they gave it away. That's a pretty big deal. I don't want that and I don't want you to have that.
I want you to have the ability to give your kids what they need when they need it and enjoy it. And the first thing I want you to do when we're thinking about giving is I want you to do a little thought experiment. I'll do it with you. In the 18 years of your childhood, see if you can name five gifts. Five gifts that your parents gave you. I remember one specifically, it was a book called Into Thin Air.
And the reason I remember that is it was about Mount Everest and the tragedy that happened, but it really got me interested in mountain climbing and that kind of spun into rock climbing and that really changed my life. I got to do a lot of cool things because of that. So I remember that book. I remember as a, this wasn't a specific gift to myself, but my family got the gift of a foosball tape. and we played foosball for years and years and years after that. And I remember that.
I remember my sister Allison got a guitar. And the reason I remember that one is because she didn't play it. I did. I started playing, and I don't know, 35 years later, I'm still playing the guitar. So that was cool. But that's it. I don't remember much else after that. And the reason I say that, and you're probably similar to me, is that. I want to take a little bit of pressure off, right? You know, the kids are going to have fun.
It's an enjoyable experience, but you know, in the end they're not going to remember. So don't stress out about it too much. So how do you have a Christmas? How do you give in order that people can, your kids can enjoy it, realize what the season's for, spending time with your family? So this is our system. This is how we give. Santa Claus comes. As long as our kids believe in Santa Claus. they are going to get a gift from Santa Claus.
Santa Claus' gift always comes in plain paper, just brown paper, wrapped with a ribbon, no tape. And it is never the most expensive gift. It is never super elaborate. It is a nice gift that Santa gives. And that's for a reason. I am very blessed. I feel like I have a good job. We live a modest lifestyle. we're able to give at the holidays, we're able to give charitably. I'm very thankful for what I have.
And I don't ever want my friends, or my kids' friends, to ever feel like their life is not as good or they were bad because Santa didn't bring them something amazing. Santa's never going to bring my kids the iPad. Now they might get an iPad because they need one and that's what they really want, but he's never going to bring it because I know... They're going to interact with people where Santa would never be able to bring them an iPad. You know what I'm saying?
So in our house, Santa brings one gift and it is a nice yet simple gift that's simply wrapped in its tradition we do every year. That's gift number one. Gift number two comes from myself and my wife. We will give each kid one gift from us as a couple. Usually this is the bigger gift, you know, the size of the thing or expense. This is one big gift. Then each sibling, they give one gift to each other. So we have a family of five. They end up getting four gifts from our family.
One from Santa, one from us, one from each other's sibling. That's it. And I can promise you, the four gifts, they're well received, they're happy. There's hugs given, thank you so much, they appreciate it. Giving gift after gift after gift, at some point it just doesn't matter anymore. Now, there might be one of the gifts from me and my wife, maybe it's like an entire outfit where there's a box with a sweater and pants and socks.
I'm not saying that you can only give four things, but I do think that The idea about Christmas is to be together as a family. If you're a Christian, it's to celebrate the birth of Christ. And it's to enjoy each other's company. And the giving is just one part of that. Now, my kids are gonna get more gifts. I have three sisters. There's 12 cousins inside of our family. Each cousin picks one person, so that's another they get a gift from their cousin.
They get grandparents on both sides, they get gifts on both sides from them. So they're getting more things and I would encourage you to kind of take that into account when you're figuring out your gifts. Maybe if you've got a giant family, maybe they just get one gift from you. But the gifts themselves are not important. Don't go into debt to make a great Christmas. Don't do it. Four gifts that we give.
And the other thing, my parents did this for us, is they always got us an experience, or they tried to get us an experience, meaning we would go see a play. We would get a big gift that, like we got a ping pong table one year, and a foosball table one year, and I think we got an Xbox or something one year. Something that's going to bring us together. That should be the next gift. Something that your kids can live. enjoy their life and have a better life because of it.
So I think going to see a musical or play is a great way to bring everybody together, to do something memorable. And I remember all of those. I remember my dad one year, he got his tickets to see the Phantom of the Opera in Toronto. We took a family vacation a couple of weeks after Christmas. We stayed at a hotel in Toronto. We froze because it was like negative 50 degrees. We went into this theater where it was specifically built for the Phantom of the Opera, this giant chandelier.
came at us and I was probably 15 and I'm 43 and I still remember that. It was a memorable gift. Buy your kids something memorable. Buy them an event. Buy them a class. Buy them something to improve their life. Those are the gifts that are going to be remembered. I don't remember many gifts that I had that I can put my hands on. I don't remember toys that I bought or that I was given. I remember those things. So to break it down, we don't spend a lot of money.
In all, we probably spend $1,000 to $1,500 for Christmas. And that includes gifts for our nieces. And I think there should be a limit, because obviously you can keep going, and you could spend lots and lots of money, and the return just isn't there. Santa gives a simple gift. We give an experience. My kids might listen to this, so I'm not gonna tell you what the experience is in case one of them is trying to sneak, but we are going to get them experience this year. It's gonna be fun.
So one, don't stress about it. Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ, being together as a family, enjoying each other's company, having lots of food, relaxing. That's the point of it. Gifts are just part of it. Be simple, set a limit. It's so easy to go over, oh, just one more thing. Just one more thing, they don't need it. They don't need one more thing. Be simple. You know, I heard someone say, baby, Jesus got three gifts, so you're getting three gifts.
Whatever your system is, stick to it. Ours is each person gives a gift, we have a family gift and a Santa gift. And it has worked for 15 years, our kids are not destitute, they don't hate us because they only got four gifts. It's totally worth doing. So put this plan or a plan into action, earn your title every day. This has been the Earn Your Title podcast and I'll talk to you later, bye.