To Do Or Not To Do

While shopping for my kids this week, I did feel odd being able to give them a lot of what they wanted given our current economic times. Ifound myself continuously justifying my expenditures by saying,"My kids work really hard all year", "They deserve this", "I'm not spoiling them", "I'm actually a pretty demanding parent so they deserve some fun", etc. Each year I host a Christmas Eve celebration where in addition to reading the Christmas story from scripture we exchangegifts. I've been trying to figure out how to do this w/o embarassing my friends or family who are struggling. We decided to exchange meaningful, handmade, nonmonetary gifts during the celbration and to pass out our gifts to each other apart from this gathering. I am a little torn because the kids really look forward to the big gift exchange but as a kid who went through hard times I know what it is like to not have a bounty under the tree. Especially b/c we spend a lot of time empahsizing the real reason for the season and my kids are very aware and sensitive to the needs of others. Oh well, I've got a couple of days to figure it out.