a bike for Christmas

How do you teach your children the meaning of giving? We've struggled with how to help our kids understand that there's more to life than "getting", and that the latest, greatest, newest "toy" isn't free. We've asked them to contribute small monetary amounts for different family projects, or maybe they have to go with us while we put in extra time at church or the occasional community service, but how do we show them what a gift or time can mean to someone in need?

This story is about my oldest son, Garrett, and a choice that he made this past Christmas.

We knew that we were going to buy both he and his brother a bike for Christmas. Garrett had beat his bike to pieces, and Grayson outgrew his months earlier.

We pick a "family" cause to give to every Christmas. Usually that consists of us giving an anonymous gift to someone, and the boys are usually asked to pitch in a little bit of their own money.

Garrett's 9 years old, and we felt that it was time for him to understand that there are children in our own area who don't have a ton of presents under the tree, and that there's more to Christmas than "getting".

We bought most of the boy's presents (way more than we should have!), and determined who we would give to this year, but we were really struggling with how to show Garrett what Christmas is really about. We decided to give him an option for his biggest Christmas present - we told him that both he and Grayson would be receiving a bike, but that we wanted him to consider deferring his bike until spring so that we could give a larger "family" gift to someone who needed it. I told him that his mom & I were not going to buy gifts for each other this Christmas - finances have been tighter at our house too.

We let him know that it was his choice - and that we would love and support him no matter what his decision was. We also let him know that regardless of his choice, his younger brother (age 5) would receive a bike on Christmas morning.

Some might think that we were unfair to Garrett. Honestly, he really struggled with the decision. It took him 3 days to decide that he wanted his bike for Christmas. I told him that I understood, and that he would receive a bike on Christmas morning.

He was miserable. Really miserable.

About 2 hours later he came back and said that he had changed his mind. He wasn't very sure about changing his mind, and I told him to wait until the next morning and we would decide what he wanted to do.

The next morning he knew what he wanted to do, and had no hesitation. A few days later I swore him to secrecy on who the gift was for and we went to purchase the gift cards. I watched him walk up to the person (who hopefully didn't know who he was), hand them a card and say "Merry Christmas", and then walk away.

I could tell by the look on his face that he understood what Christmas, what giving, is really about. He got it.

We learned a couple of days later that the need was greater than we realized, and I hope that we were a blessing to someone in need.

It was hard not to go ahead and buy him an awesome bike for Christmas - I wanted to find the best bike around for him, but felt that doing so would have devalued the lesson that he learned.

It's April now, and we just bought the bike. He wanted an orange Mongoose mountain bike (wonder if Tennessee orange is starting to run through his veins?). I would have bought him any bike he wanted. We spent an entire Saturday looking for that bike. I would have spent 2 Saturdays, whatever it took, to find that bike.

I am so proud of my son. He made a difficult choice and learned a valuable lesson. I still choke up (read "get teary eyed" - ha!) when I think about how hard it was for him to choose to defer his biggest Christmas present.

But he got it.