Christmas Santa Popcorn Gift

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Welcome Christmas season!

Welcome lights, music, and goodwill towards men.

Welcome innocence and joy and youth.

I love this beautiful time of year!

As much as I love it, it is true that a mother’s To Do list gets overwhelmed pretty easily.

Uphold family traditions, volunteer at class and community holiday parties, find gifts for everyone on a long list, spread love and joy, and somehow stay sane through it all.

One of the most forbidding items on my holiday list every year is finding or making Friend/Neighbor/Teacher gifts.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE giving them out and letting people know that we care about them.

It is only hard because I am NOT a creative person by nature, and it’s one of the few times of the year that I try to be.

I change it up every year and we only budget up to $1 per gift so I have to be very creative to make our dollar stretch.

I insist that the gifts are delivered the weekend after Thanksgiving because I know from past experience that otherwise they won’t get delivered.

The holiday rush gets too overwhelming if I am not 100% on top of my planning game.

This year the gift I had planned fell through at the last second so I was trying to come up with a backup plan only a few hours before I had planned to deliver them.

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

I found a stockpile of microwave popcorn (if you know me at all, you know I ALWAYS have a stockpile of popcorn in the house) and got to work.

Some construction paper and simple cutting later, we were ready to assemble the Santa bags and add the gift tag poem.

Of course, you can use high quality paper and beautiful embellishments to create the same basic look but I just worked with what I could find in my kids’ craft drawer.

For a great fit, simply cut a piece of standard 12 in x 9 in red construction paper in half (to make 9 in x 6 in rectangles), fold around the bag of popcorn, and tape in place.

Decide how wide you want your belt to be and cut vertical strips from black construction paper (we cut 1.5 in x 9 in strips).

Wrap them around the middle of the red paper and tape in the back.

Cut squares of yellow construction paper (our squares were about 2.25 in x 2.25 in), then fold in half and cut out center square to make belt buckles.

Feel free to use any type of crafting adhesive you would like to for this project, but I only used regular Scotch tape because it was handy.

For the belt buckles, I tri-folded the tape onto itself horizontally so it was a very thin, long piece that worked out perfectly for this project.

Now you are all ready to add your gift tag poem.

I cut out the tags and mounted them on green construction paper for an extra pop of Christmas color, but you can just attach them as is.

Feel free to use this one or create your own unique poem.

It only took a few hours to put together twenty gifts and deliver them to our neighbors while we wished them a Merry Christmas. Done!

I loved this idea because Santa Claus/St. Nicholas has always had a special place in my heart.

We teach our children about the true meaning of Christmas but I feel like it is also important to not overlook those who choose to spend their life following the example of the Babe in the manger.

St Nicholas was an incredible individual whose life choices are nothing short of impressively amazing.

He was raised by wealthy parents who instilled strong Christian values in him before they died in an epidemic when he was still young.

He gave away his entire inheritance and served as a Catholic bishop from the time he was a young man.

He served those around him his entire life and provided for those in need.

You can read more details about St Nicholas and some of the legends that surround him HERE.

That article is where I referenced these particular details and legends about him.

My favorite legend of him is the one about the three sisters.

In his society, it was unfortunately customary that girls whose fathers could not provide a dowry were sold into slavery.

This particular poor family had no means to protect their daughters from an impending life of slavery.

Hearing of their plight, St Nicholas secretly tossed a bag of gold into their open window (which fell into socks hung by the fire to dry) each night for three nights.

His generosity saved the three poor girls, as they now had a dowry and could marry.

He did this act of service in secret; he had no thought of his own reward or recognition for what he did.

Talk about understanding the true meaning of Christmas!

I hate it that St Nicholas has in some instances become synonymous with commercialized holiday greediness because that is not what the true story of his life is about.

Just as we teach our children the true meaning of Christmas, let’s teach our children the true significance of St Nicholas’ life and example.

Disclaimer: We do not go over the explicit details of St Nicholas’ life until our children have grown up enough to understand that he is not still physically alive today.

This makes for an amazing transitional experience explaining to your child who he really was and why we still honor his legacy today.

We have always allowed our very young children to enjoy the innocence of youth and the legend of Santa bringing them gifts on Christmas Eve.

We hope you enjoy teaching your children about the wonderful life and legend of St Nicholas this year, to both your old and young children as you see fit.

Merry Christmas to all you wonderful families!

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