For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
Christmas gifts. You must be thinking ‘shopping for gifts so soon’. That’s what I thought until last month, when I mailed all our fathers in church a gift for Father’s Day, celebrated on the 5th of September. However, the gift arrived a few days later due to the delay at our postal service even though I mailed it at our post office the week before. Again my postage was delayed when I ordered a gift online for my son’s birthday. This time, I ordered three weeks earlier, but it took four weeks to arrive. The postal service will only get busier due to the increase in Christmas parcels and mails, so if you plan to do any online shopping or posting, I would suggest starting early so that your gift will arrive on time. However, if you are like me and prefer going to the shop itself, let’s hope and pray that the stores will be open and restrictions lifted by December. Amen.
Christmas is a time of giving. God loves us so much that He gave the one thing that is most precious to Him, His one and only Son, to save us and give us eternal life. As a mother, I know I would not be able to bear such a sacrifice. Yet, this is how much God loves me. We are reminded of God’s greatest gift when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. We can present a gift to God by preparing an offering to give at the Christmas service on Christmas Day. We also prepare gifts for those we love, our friends and family.
Let’s get started. The first is to create a Christmas budget and a gift list. We can reduce our financial stress when we have a budget for each person or family before shopping for a gift. Take a few minutes to make a list. Now that we got our Christmas list of the names of those we would like to give a gift to and the budget allocated for each one, it is time to do some shopping. An excellent way to save time is to know what to get for each person before heading out to shop. Having an itemised list also allows us to compare prices and know which shop to get the best deal. We could either go online or wait till the stores are open. Either way, this gives us a heads up in our Christmas preparation this year.
Having a plan and preparing in advance would give us more time to enjoy the celebration with family and friends. Don’t stress; just plan, prepare and enjoy the season! My favourite part of Christmas is the joy of giving. The fun is to enjoy wrapping presents with my family. We would wrap the gifts that I bought for church, friends and relatives but not the ones we wanted to give each other. That’s a surprise! We would turn on some carols and wrap gifts by the Christmas tree. Don’t forget the cookies and drinks after. Such fun!
