The Santa Letter Made Simple

Now before you get bent out of shape about the commercialization of Christmas - I hear you. I get it. I would feel a little guilty if I believed in guilt - but I don't. Guilt is such a useless emotion.

Christmas is what it is and I like it that way. No, I'm not going to go into debt in order to give my over-privileged children more stuff but I am going to give them more stuff. Hopefully more stuff that they actually want. And there's the problem. What, exactly, do they want?

Christmas shopping was so much easier when the kids were toddlers. It wasn't even that hard when they were in elementary school. But as they get older, it gets more and more difficult to decide exactly what to buy. We ask them what they want and they shrug. We ask them what they want, they tell us something and we think "Ah hah! I can do that!" only to find they've bought the darn thing (Hopefully before I've bought it.) I used to have a rule that you could NOT buy yourself anything between November 1 and December 24. It was a good rule. My children should still follow it - but they're grown up and they just don't listen.

Today Sassymonkey sent me a link to a story about an app that lets kids scan barcodes of things that they want - and then they can use that list to create a letter for Santa. Barcode Hero -- I love this idea. What? Don't judge me. My kids are 27, 24, 20, 17, 15, and 12. They are old enough to take their phones to the store and scan barcodes. This doesn't change the meaning of Christmas for them one little bit. It doesn't even take away any of the magic of Christmas because barcode technology IS magic.

There are only two problems here:

1. Not all of my kids have the technology necessary to use this wonderful list creator. Four of the six kids do - which just leaves two to deal with, the two that are the HARDEST to shop for.

2. This doesn't prevent the kids from buying something from their list a week before Christmas.

I guess I could give the two without iPhone/iPod Touch technology iPhones and iPod Touches for Christmas. That would solve issue #1. But how to solve issue #2? I have no idea... if you have any ideas, could you let me know?

As an aside, this is actually a great app year round for those of you who have college or young adult kids. I often want to send a care package but am not always sure of exactly what to send. If I can teach my kids to use this app, I'll be able to send them surprise gifts of things that they actually need all year long.

Brilliant use of the barcode. I'll let you know if I can convince the kids to use it.

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
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