Family Shopping for Family

Shopping can take up a lot of time during the holidays, depending on how many people are on your gift list.  One solution is to ask others in the household to help you with shopping.  There are several ways to accomplish this task, and you can make it fun for everyone.

How can you have your family help with Christmas shopping? If you have younger children, let them help you shop for your husband or grandparents. For many years, I would purchase gifts for my husband that I tagged from the children, but soon found out it means much more if it is something the child picked out, even if it is not what you would have chosen. One of my favorite gifts to this day is the gift my daughter gave me one year – she went around the house and collected things she knew I liked, placed them in a gift bag, and put it under the tree along with a personal note.

If your child’s school or somewhere in the community offers a Secret Santa Shop for children (this is where the child goes into the store with money and purchases gifts for family), send money with your child and a list of who to buy for and how much to spend on each person. You would be surprised at the gifts they select to give to those in the family. If you are a grandparent or aunt, uncle, best friend, etc., take the children to buy gifts for their parents, if only to the dollar store with a few dollars – the rewards can be great.

If you have older children, consider giving them a budget amount along with their list of friends, cousins, teachers, etc. to buy gifts for, eliminating whole groups from your gift buying list. Another way to involve older children is to draw names from the people you are giving gifts to and let them take on the responsibility of coming up with gift ideas, selecting a gift, buying, and wrapping the gift. This could be an introduction to Christmas gift-giving for them – and you might be very surprised at what they come up with to purchase.

Remember, Christmas is celebrated by not only yourself but also by those in your household. Involve others in the process, and the rewards will most likely be great. You begin to teach them the valuable lesson of embracing Christmas and themselves becoming a gift to others during the season.