Best Christmas Gift Ever

This year, I'm giving my kids the best Christmas gift ever.  Check it out.  Here's a picture of our Christmas tree.

And here's a picture of all the presents I'm buying the kids.

You don't see any presents?  Exactly.  I'm not buying anything for the kids this Christmas.  Man, it feels really good to type that.

There are many reasons to not buy my kids anything, the largest one being that they don't need anything.  They have more toys than they could play with, most of which we have not bought.  Gram-gram loves her yard sales (I hate 'em) and thanks to her relentless weekend-after-weekend summer escapades, our basement is overcrowded and underused.

We've been slowly working on finishing our basement and turning it into a playroom for the kids.  With the carpet down and the walls up, we have been able to move all of their toys downstairs.  There are toys in every corner...

...and under the stairs...

...by the door...

I'm pretty sure that trash bag outside the door is full of toys too.

...stacked in a pile...

...just waiting to be played with.

There are toys hidden away in cold, unused rooms, because, like the sweet baby Jesus, there just isn't any room for them.

Even with all their toys in one central location we can't get the kids to actually play with any of them.  The only way they will play with their toys is to threaten to throw them away if they don't.  This tells me a couple of things.  One, they have too much crap and two, they don't care about the junk they do have until I threaten to throw it out.  So, there is no good reason to buy them toys of any kind for Christmas.

 What little time they do spend in the basement is used staring at the t.v.

Plus there's the grandparent factor.  Grandparents always go overboard for Christmas and birthdays.  The baby was lucky to get a cake for her birthday let alone any presents from Mom and Dad.  Having grown up without much to open for their own Christmases has translated into vicariously unwrapping gifts through our children.  They're not only buying presents for our kids, they are buying gifts for their inner child as well.

Luckily, we have a house rule that deals with the grandparents' obscene gift-giving practices.  For every toy that is brought in to our house, two toys must leave.  Really, I should thank Me-Maw.  The more toys she buys, the more toys we can ship off to Goodwill.

Kids expect toys for Christmas and, for me,  that's the best reason to not buy anything.   Where did this sense of entitlement come from?   Kids, I don't owe you anything at Christmas time.  Your mom and I buy you crap all year long, so unless December 25th is your birthday, I'm not buying you anything.  I'm not going to use the threat of "no gifts" to make you behave and I'm certainly not going to tell you lies about Santa.  I'll gladly sing the songs, drink some eggnog, and maybe even go driving around looking at lights.  But, there's no way I'm bringing anymore crap into this house.