So this past Saturday we had our annual Christmas dinner-get together at my Nanny's house (my Mother's mother). Several years back we made this rule that only the kids get a gift since all the rest of us are old now and no one really needs anything, etc. Well, instead what we do is each person or branch of the family saves all their change throughout the year and a different person from the family each year gets to pick a charity in which we will give this money to. We all bring out our change jars, jugs, bags, piggy banks and what have you and after we eat we pour it all out on a big table and sit around and seperate it, roll it then count it all up, try and keep Blayd from eating the it....the child loves to put change in his mouth, during which we have fun conversation, catch up with the out of towners and get extremely DIRTY hands...you have NO IDEA how NASTY money is!!!! This year we managed to save up I believe the total was somewhere around $1,300-1,400 dollars! My sister was the lucky one to get to pick the charity this year and the donation is going to The American Cancer Society in honor of our Nanny surviving cancer and our Cousin Lucius Powers succumbing to his brain cancer this past August.
You can't imagine how much more fulfilling it is to do something like this and give to those less fortunate or help out a local charity than to just shower everyone with more gifts they do not need! We have been doing this for several years now and we really enjoy it, except for the nasty money hands afterwards, but it is worth it!
Side Note on Nasty Money Hands: You would have thought I was scrubbing in for surgery if you saw me washing up afterwards...lol...
2 comments:
That's a great idea. What an unselfish and fulfilling holiday tradition. And it's so much better than another pair of socks or an ugly top! I'm jealous of that family tradition.
Yes, we LOVE it! It is great and we have more fun doing that then we ever did opening all the crazy gifts!!!
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