Obsessed with Presents

We were going over the Christmas Story last night with Ari (drove by the house on the hill with the manger scene). We were explaining that there was a lady named Mary, she was going to have a baby, there was no room in the hotels so she had to go to a barn, she had baby Jesus, angels, bright start, shepherds etc... He was listening very intently while starting out the car window; then I got to the part about how the wise-men came bringing presents Ari perked right up. He pops his head up and says "presents! And he opened them. And it was a car. And and and he went vroom vroom vroomy vroom, and he played with his car and he was sooo happy..." I hated to break it to him that no one gave Jesus a toy car, but I felt the need to explain he only got gold and perfumy type things.

I continued with the story explaining that all these people came to see Jesus because they had been waiting for him to be born because he was very special... At the end of the story I thought I would do a little evaluation to see what Ari had retained. I asked Ari "so why did people come from far far away to see baby Jesus" to which Ari replied "because he had presents".

I don't know how to get away from the whole presents thing; I don't want to raise a little ultra Christmas consumer. I try to talk to Ari about simple things he can GIVE people for Christmas or what nice things we can DO or MAKE for people but I don't think I'm getting through on that point either. Allow we to share another conversation I had with Ari after presenting him with the aforementioned ideas. It went something like this:

Me: So what are some nice things we can do for people at Christmas time.
Ari: Ummm. We can open presents.
Me: Not for us, for other people, what can we do for someone else to make them happy.
Ari: Well, we could just open some presents.
Me: Well, we don't need to give presents, we can just do nice things. What's something nice we can do.
Ari: I know! We can open presents for them.
Me: I have an idea, we could help someone rake their leaves...etc...
Ari: Oooor weeeee cooooould open some presents.
Me: Well if you want to GIVE presents whats something we can give someone else?
Ari: Ummmm. I just want to open presents.

Maybe my approach is all wrong.

I suppose it's a good thing we have the rest of the year to work on refining our childrens giving skills.