I'm Not Giving My Children Any Christmas Gifts This Year

— -- (Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Babble.com. It has been reprinted here with permission. The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of both ABC News and Babble.)

My family and I live in a subdivision within Central Florida; a stone’s throw away from Walt Disney World. Not exactly a remote area, but the closest shopping mall isn’t for miles and every good department store is about a 30-minute drive away. Which is all a means to say, my husband and I are like millions of other Americans: We’ve been converted into loyal online shoppers.

With great services like Amazon Prime, we save on time and gas money by simply clicking through all our basic needs and having everything delivered within hours. It’s modern laziness at its finest.

I mean, this is how 2016 looks like now, right? Why bother elbowing your way through Black Friday shoppers when you can get everything on your Christmas list without even showering or putting on proper pants?

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But therein lies the crux of the issue; the wormhole into which we recently fell.

Here’s the thing: Usually when you go to a store and can’t find something, you simply don’t buy it, right? Except, everything is in stock online. And always, too. And shopping online has become so addictive that my husband and I often do it every single week, buying up everything from little items like school pens, papers, and erasers for the kids to bigger household items like paper rolls, cleaning products, and toiletries for us.

To sum it all up for you, there isn’t a day that the UPS man doesn’t ring our doorbell. My kids are so used to getting little things here and there that they almost expect something to be waiting for them every day after school.

And recently it’s gotten so out of hand that it’s actually caused a rift in my marriage.

A few weeks ago, I asked my husband to buy a foosball table as a Christmas gift for the kids, because I found a great price online I just couldn’t pass up. I was hoping he would keep it packed away somewhere and wait to install it until Christmas Eve, but nope. Sunday afternoon, I came home absolutely infuriated to see it sitting in the middle of my living room.

My kids apparently saw a big brown box in one of our closets and took it upon themselves to open it. And instead of putting it away, my husband just couldn’t help himself -- he opened it with them, instantly ruining my Christmas surprise in the process.

My family’s collective need to open any box with an Amazon Prime sticker on it has gotten so bad that their little fingers can’t help but tear open anything that is left on our front porch.

And that’s when it hit me: Modern consumerism is having the exact opposite effect of what we’ve been taught and try all too hard to practice. We’ve grown accustomed to all the best food, fastest internet connections, newest video games, on-demand television, and the instant-gratification of online shopping. And while all of that is awesomely convenient in theory, as a parent trying to raise down-to-earth kids with some scrap of decency, I gotta put my foot down somewhere.

If I’m being honest, my first reaction to the foosball debacle was to cancel Christmas. It’s absolutely ridiculous to me that Christmas has become a weekly affair in our house. But knowing full well that all hell would break loose if I canceled the most important day of the year to my kids, I calmed myself down, sat down with the kids, and came up with an alternative plan: This year’s Christmas will be all about the giving rather than the receiving.

What does that mean?

There will be no hand-written letters to Santa Claus; no never-ending Amazon Prime lists created; and certainly no deliveries made to our front door every single day. Instead, we’ll be buying gifts for the friends and family that we love, but more as a token of our appreciation for them being in our lives.

Of course, the first reactions to my master plan weren’t exactly positive. My husband was hoping to get a massage chair (online, no less), my son wanted to add to his Tsum Tsum collection, and my daughter was hoping for yet another American Girl doll. But I’m hoping that by teaching them to give rather than receive this year, we can somehow reinstate the Christmas spirit that has long been dead in our house.

And while I’m sure they’ll still get gifts from their grandparents and relatives, I’m determined to somehow erase this notion that we need things so damn much -- right here and right now.

I know it sounds impossible, but we’ve got to make baby steps in the right direction. I certainly don’t want to raise my kids in a world in which they lack the mindfulness and self-awareness they need to be good people. At least, that’s my hope for now. (Come back and see me Dec. 26.)