The season is in full swing and no matter what you celebrate there are reminders everywhere that you could be celebrating more. Magazine covers, every commercial on TV, good intentioned friends and family asking “are you ready yet?”. It is hard enough to help our kids find the meaning of the season with so many messages coming at us from all directions.

This year I had started out the holiday season on sort of a downer with the images from TV of people being stampeded on the day after Thanksgiving trying to get that one holiday specially priced item. So, that put me in a little bit of a bad mood. So, this week we tried something a little different. We have gone out of our way to make sure we are spending our time around people that are positive. I did not buy an extra magazine with more ideas. I still have the magazines from the past 7 Decembers and haven’t tried half the ideas in those. We are making a concious effort to keep it simple. And the final key is that we have gone back to basics. I pulled out a couple of the kids “baby” books on Christmas. The big chunky cardboard types. And we are reading the very basic stories written in the most basic terms.

The biggest thing for me though was the first part of this equation and that was making a concious effort to surround my kids with people that can be positive. So, be picky about how you spend your time and energy this season.

On a side note: the most recent toy to be inducted in the Toy Hall of Fame was an empty cardboard box - it provides hours of entertainment long after its contents have been broken and dispersed throughout the toy box.