by Owen Jones
Everybody likes to be given presents, but adults also get pleasure from giving and seeing the joy on the faces of their children whilst they open them. Gifts are given by nations all around the world, obviously. Nearly everybody in each country gives a birthday gift and many countries give a New Year's present, but the biggest present-giving culture is Christian and Christmas is their biggest gift-giving time of the year.
It is such a robust instinct for Christians to give gifts at Christmas, that many adults will forego gifts for themselves simply to buy their children what they would like within the bounds of their finances. Actually, many go even further than that and put themselves under financial stress for a number of months just so that their children will get pleasure from Christmas.
In fact, Christmas has got outrageously out of hand The idea of giving a present at Christmas was to imitate the giving of gifts by the Three Wise Men to Jesus shortly after his birth. It is the case that the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh were very expensive, but the givers of the gifts were very wealthy men, even so they merely gave one gift each.
These days parents spend hundreds on dozens of gifts per child. There were five children in our family and we used to get a sack of toys per person and communal toys for all of us to play together like Monopoly. My parents were not well-off and my mother did not have time to work outside the home, so my father must have worked like a dog to buy it all.
I did not realize that then, but I have since seen my brothers struggling to pay to do the same for their offspring. Still, the joy of seeing your children's happy smiling faces as they open their gifts at Christmas appears to be worth it for most parents.
Some of the most popular toys with children might be dolls prams or train sets or bikes all of which fall into the bracket of 'expensive', whereas popular suggestions for good toys for children are more like to be educational, such as Scrabble, Lego and books which are a lot less expensive.
Kids' ideas for toys for themselves tend to feed the imagination, whereas parents' thoughts about toys for kids tend to feed the brain. Kids want to feed the right hand side of their brain while their parents instinctively would like to feed the left hand side.
As children grow up into teenagers, music and computers play major roles in most of their lives, again reflecting the left and right sides of the brain. now the roles are more evenly balanced. This is a topsy-turvy time for young adults. All kinds of things are happening within and without them. Will the balance stay even or will it tip one way or the other? Only time will tell.
About the Author:
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with Silver Cross Dolls Prams. If you would like to know more, please go over to our website at Doll Prams.
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