The 3 Gifts of Christmas

So in the hustle and craziness of moving and trying to get our home set up and fit in Christmas activities and whatnot here and there, I have been really pondering on Christmas and how to tie it in more with it's true meaning.  I try to do lots of fun and good things with my kids each year and it is always a really fun time of year and each Christmas is a wonderful day.  But this year I am wanting to make Christmas even more meaningful.  I want to start something that could make an already wonderful day into an even more wonderful day, with more depth.  I want the actual day to also reach back more into it's original meaning, the birth of our Savior.
Now I am a lover of Santa and the magic of Christmas.  I love the Christmas season!  We are not deleting any of that wonderfulness.  Jon is a lover of presents!  He is a youngest child and had and has MANY toys.  Christmas is always huge at our house and it is really fun.  But I don't like that we save up all these great gifts and have almost too much on Christmas day (please no comments on how you feel that we have too many toys or gifts as well, I am completely aware of this fact).  I want to make it more special I guess.
So I was listening to President Eyring's Christmas devotional talk again for my scripture study on Friday and I felt touched by his meaningful and heartfelt gifts.  I don't have time to make something amazing this year.  I don't have time to do all the things I want to do for everyone.  It is so hard to fit in what you want to do and what you feel is most important.  I sat there thinking (well actually I was unpacking and listening and thinking all at the same time) and I remembered hearing about the 3 gifts of Christmas.  I had heard about this from some friends at a play-group about a year ago.  I really didn't catch much of what was said as I was watching my adventurous 1 year old (and I thought she was adventurous then--yikes, now she is just fearless)!  I just remember that there were 3 gifts; a spiritual gift, a physical gift, and a fun gift.  I remember thinking that I never have specifically thought of giving a spiritual gift.  I hadn't really thought of spreading out the gift giving/thinking that way at all and I thought it sounded really neat. 
So I decided to google this and see if I came up with anything.  And yes I did!  I really liked what I found and it was even more neat than what I had remembered because it ties in so well with the true meaning of Christmas, without making it feel like we are trying to make Christmas into family home evening lesson or a Sacrament meeting.  I know, you are all waiting to hear what it is, but I will make a disclaimer here first that most of the families that do this only give 3 gifts TOTAL.  Some do not believe in Santa and some do not even believe in giving big gifts for the 3 gifts.  I also know that there is NO WAY ON EARTH that Jon would agree to only giving 3 gifts total (and only one that is a toy-like gift) for Christmas.  I don't really quite agree with that either, but to each their own, and I think it's a really neat tradition.
Okay, so here is what it is:

The three gifts of Christmas symbolize the three gifts the Wise Men brought to Jesus: 

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.

Gold symbolizes something precious and greatly desired by the receiver.

Frankincense was an incense used on the altars of the temple, so frankincense will symbolize our spiritual growth-a gift that will strengthen our spirits and souls.

Myrrh was used medicinally.  This will symbolize our physical needs.

The more I thought about this, the more I loved it.  Now it was on to convincing Jon--I sent him an email so he could ponder on it through the day and we could talk about it later.  He was hilarious in his response as he usually is and stated that there was no way we were only going to give 3 gifts total to each child (as I suspected he would say).  So I made it better by a compromise, at least to just try this out.  The kids each will get 3 sets of the 3 gifts of Christmas, plus Santa will come, plus presents from Grandparents and cousins will still be under the tree, aka: there will still be plenty of presents.  And he agreed!  

So tonight we are having an FHE to discuss this.  I am working on how to present it and how to have the kids draw each others names and whatnot.  

I am actually superly excited about some of the ideas I have had!  I have always wanted to frame the Christ with the Children picture for my kids' rooms.  So I plan to make frames out of (I know, I am funny) the dark stained slats under the kids bunkbeds that broke (and we replaced, but I kept the wood because I knew I could make some kind of frame or something with it) for two of the large Christ with the Children pictures for my spiritual gift to the kids.  I had a bunch of other good ideas-a mini Book of Mormon, a CD/download for you higher-tech (could go lots of places with that-I would for sure count Les Mes as a spiritual gift), a good book, a mini-primary children's songbook, a special CTR piece of jewelry, etc.  For Myrhh-that's my personal favorite kind of gift-clothes, make-up, oh and did I mention clothes?  And of course gold seems so obvious, but now I want that gift to be more special-something that the reciever really wants-one really special item from me rather than a bunch of fun items.  

This will be fun and I plan to make special re-usable tags to go on the gifts that say what they symbolize, so I better get going on that.  Oh, dear, I have to unpack my sewing and craft stuff first-yikes-maybe the tags won't be re-usable this year!  Better get with it!  Have a Merry Christmas!!

After I did some research on these items and prepared our FHE a few weeks ago, I learned so much and so I am adding to my blog post here to just share a little more about these items-just quickly about what I remember-I will try to add more detail later, but no promises.  Gold-like the life of Christ-always the standard to follow-I learned a lot about how gold mixes with other metals and substances and it could really tie into having a change of heart and having the pure love of Christ.  I learned that Frankincense was not only used in the altars of the temple for incense, but for the animal sacrifices that represented Christ's sacrifice for us.  Myrrh was used at Christ's death as they prepared his body for the tomb.  Also used for medicinal purposes-Christ is the ultimate healer.  Anyway, I learned a lot about all three things and it was fun to talk with the kids about what they meant and the kids came up with neat ideas for their gifts for each other!