White Elephant // What are the gifts you’re looking forward to giving, or hoping to receive?
When I was growing up, Hanukkah had some predictability to it. We would always receive: calendar, pajamas, at least one outfit, one "big" gift, usually a book, and a few little things that we wanted to fill in the gap. Once I got to college, it was truncated to calendar, pajamas, and a big gift. I really enjoyed that growing up. And it's a tradition that I plan to continue forward with Knish. The only gift we got her last year was a dreidel. And I would like to start a dreidel tradition every year.
I saw in Pinterest (a blessing and a curse) a set of gifts themed "something you want, something you need; something to wear, and something to read". I can pair this with a calendar, pajamas, dreidel, and charitable donation to round out the 8 nights. Since Hanukkah isn't about gifts, per se, I would still like to keep the holiday modest as the years go on, but I know celebrating Christmas with half the family will confound this.
This year, my husband's family and I are doing something new for us - we are cutting back on gifts for each other and are instead adopting a family and buying for them. We all agreed that by the end of the holiday, we felt obligated and drained, so why not take the budget we were going to spend and turn it into something positive. We are all taking great joy in planning what to get for the family and I hope we can turn this into an annual tradition.
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