If you’re not familiar with it, you might suspect that there’s fist-a-cuffs over gift exchanges! But Boxing Day is a tradition of giving gifts to people who are less fortunate.

We don’t want to leave the impression that we think us Yanks are Scrooges. A lot of people here are very generous throughout the holiday season. But we think Boxing Day is an interesting tradition, truly in tune with the spirit of this time of the year.

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The son who learned to give

We found a great story about a mom who taught her son about the value of giving. We’ll hit the highlights here. It’s written from the son’s point-of-view.

The first Christmas that he remembers, he was thoroughly excited about all of his gifts. His mom soon squashed his enthusiasm; she told him he had to choose one present to give away to a little kid who wasn’t as lucky as he was. It was a hard decision, but he finally chose a present to give away.

Another Christmas, he really had trouble deciding between his gifts before finally settling on his new checker set. His mom left the room, only to return a short time later with a piece of cardboard, crayons, and his bottle cap collection. They proceeded to make a checker set by hand.

The author remembers one year, when his mom had been laid off, that he didn’t get many gifts. She told him that he didn’t have to give any presents away that year. But he decided he still wanted to observe the tradition. That year, he gave away his new football. Six months later, he asked his mom what she wanted for her birthday. Being a wonderful mom, she requested a football!

The son continued this tradition of giving away one of his presents every year, even as an adult. He ended up passing it on to his own son.

A reserve to give

This boy’s mom made it clear to him that they gave something every year to what she called “poor people.” He says that, years later, he realized they were poor themselves. Isn’t it interesting – to some extent, poor is a state of mind. If we have enough in reserve that we can afford to give something away, we must not be poor.

Give away the good stuff

Picture yourself as a kid. Do you remember being excited by just about every single gift? What if your mom would have told you that you had to give one of them away? That would have been pretty hard, huh?

We often give what we don’t want any longer or we buy something new just for the purpose of giving it away. We don’t have an attachment to it. It seems to us that giving away something you just received would really pack a punch – even for an adult, but especially for a kid. 

The gift of time

Then there’s the checker set. After much debate, he decided to give that away, but his mom gave him a different option. He learned that material possessions are valuable, but the gift of our time is even more valuable. The checker set he gave away was one-of-a-kind and probably worth more than the mass-produced one he kept.

Giving when it hurts

We thought it was touching that, in the bad year when his mom said he didn’t have to give anything away, he still chose to give up his football. It showed how much he had learned from his mom.

She taught him another lesson when she asked for a football for her birthday. Sometimes when you give, it comes back to you, even when it’s unexpected.

Pass it on

He passed on this tradition of passing on gifts to his own son. Of all the Christmas traditions we could pass on to our kids, what could be better than establishing a tradition of giving?

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(Image in today's post by zerobug)

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Sometimes we forget how much we already have. As we get older, we put expectations on ourselves and judge ourselves based on what we have and the gifts we can give.

The cardboard box

Have you ever seen a little kid get his or her first bigg toy – the one that comes in the bigg cardboard box? Have you ever seen a kid put the real toy aside and start playing with that cardboard box? They turn it into a fort and have fun with it for hours, playing with their friends. Through the eyes of us adults, that cardboard box is extraneous. Through the eyes of a kid, the cardboard box is a valuable toy itself.

We develop our point-of-view from our experiences. Obviously, we want to learn from them, but we need to be careful not to take away the wrong lessons. So this holiday season, try looking at the world through the eyes of a child again. Look at things as if you were seeing them for the first time. Be innocent again.

Through the eyes of a child

We want to share a touching story comparing how we perceive things as adults to how we might see them through the eyes of a child. A rich dad wants to show his daughter how less fortunate people live. So he took his daughter out to the country, where they spent a couple of days and nights on a farm with a family most people considered very poor. Here’s the conversation as they drove back to the city …

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How was the trip?

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It was great, Dad.

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Did you see how poor people live?

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Oh yeah.

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So, tell me, what did you learn?

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I saw that we have one dog and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us; they have friends to protect them. We have a staff that serves us, but they serve others. Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.

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As you might imagine, the girl’s father was speechless. He thought he would teach his daughter a lesson … it turns out that it was he who needed to learn one.

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We really appreciate you checking in on us today. Join us next time when we talk about the best present of all. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00291-122208.mp3

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(Image of the car by stOrmz,CC 2.0)

(Images of dad and daughter in today's post by stockbroke)