How to establish gospel-centered traditions

My parents maintain that they’ve only had one fight in their 41 years of marriage.

When Mom changed the family diet without warning.

“We’re now eating fruit every morning for breakfast!” She announced cheerfully. I don’t remember it (thankfully), but apparently Dad about blew his top. You see, the man loves his sausage and eggs, his oatmeal, his hashbrowns. The man don’t want no fruit for breakfast if you hear what I’m saying.

She quickly learned that changing the family’s traditions needs to happen slowly.

Now, the question I hear so often is this:

“How do you make your family follow along with your new giving priorities?”

That is, when you are newly burdened with a desire to give to poor, and you want to change your holiday-habits, how on earth do you do so without disappointing everyone else? What do you tell your kids? What about grandparents? Do you forbid them to buy your kids toys? What about Christmas morning? The question pertains to one particular day, but the principle can be applied to every day:

How do we establish new gospel-centered traditions?  

I’m certainly not the expert, but here are a few thoughts:

1. Go slow. Guaranteed, if you all of a sudden declare that there will be no more gift-giving or holiday shopping ever happening again, you will have World War III in your home. No bueno. Consider making small steps over the next five years. You’ll have much better results. (That same can be said with establishing new eating habits, as my mom learned!)
2. Make it fun. Over the past few years, my family has done more and more giving through Gospel for Asia. We buy pigs, goats, rabbits, Bibles, clean water. But we keep it fun. One year I gave my brother a rubber chicken and a stuffed bunny rabbit from the dollar store (symbolizing the gift we’d given in his name). Another year I gave hard-boiled eggs to everyone (again, chickens). Last year my brother gave Jeff an old Bible (sent Bibles to unreached people) and gave me a bottle of water (he drilled a well in my name).  There’s all sorts of creative ways to celebrate and keep it fun without heaping up more and more junk that we really don’t need. Get creative!
3. Let others be free. Personally, I feel that I am only responsible for the people under my roof. I’m not going to tell my parents, Jeff’s parents, or our aunts and uncles what they can and cannot do with their money. Plus, for heavens sake let grandparents be grandparents. Wild horses couldn’t keep Jeff’s and my parents from spoiling their grandkids. So we let them. We personally do not buy our children gifts. We do for their birthdays but not for Christmas. However, it’s wonderful that their grandparents do!  We’re free and so are they. (And I appreciate their amazing generosity!)
4. Never say, “We can’t afford.” Sometimes it’s easy to pull a cop-out and tell people or our children that we can’t afford certain things. But this communicates that we’re victims, which just isn’t true. Some people in our world are victims of absolute poverty. We are not. By saying, “We choose  not to buy those gifts this year so that we can bless some people in need,” we communicate an important truth. We believe that poverty-stricken people matter. We are choosing them.
5. Keep it real. Showing our children pictures of other children in need is so helpful in teaching them compassion. Daily look at pictures of children in need. When doing the Operation Christmas Child boxes, look at children in the age-group and talk about who might receive the box.  Help them see how real need is, and their hearts will be quicker to follow your new giving-traditions.