We have a lot of blessings in our life. One that makes it to the top of the list is the fact that our kids are old enough to be dropped off at birthday parties.
Now that we are back to school, the birthday party invitations will start rolling in. I am not a huge fan of children’s birthday parties, (thank you Evite for assisting in my undercover invitation declining).
But even if you don’t agree with my extreme desire to ban all birthday celebrations that include anything besides your family singing to you and eating some cake, I think one thing we should be able to agree on is that goodie bags suck.
These are the absolute last things that we need:
1) More candy – We can not even consume the amount of candy that enters our house between school and holidays.
2) Small plastic crap with small plastic pieces – Unless you’re giving away cash or maybe iPads, whatever you grab at the Dollar Store is not going to be even remotely interesting enough to hold a kid’s attention for more than 45 seconds.
3) Stickers – Can someone please explain to me the appeal of stickers?
Once received, a goodie bag arrives in our home and is promptly deposited on the kitchen table untouched and forgotten for five days until I throw it away. The whole bag. Right in the garbage. They never even ask about it. It’s like it never existed.
It’s not that I am ungrateful. I am beyond grateful. You took my child for an hour or two, you fed him, entertained him and kept him safe. Sometimes you even take BOTH of my children while I sit around watching Bravo.
If you’re absolutely insistent that we need something in return for attending your party, maybe you could make a contribution to our 529? Or buy us some lunch meat? Because we’re out (again), and Boar’s Head ain’t cheap. What about a gallon of milk? That’s a goodie bag I could get behind. It wouldn’t even have to be organic.
We do not need goodies.
We should be giving YOU a goodie bag with a fifth of tequila, a pound of M&M’s and a life supply of Advil.
I get it. You want your child’s party to be special, memorable, themed. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the stuff we think we need to make it special. You’re in the party supply aisle at Target and you just can’t help yourself. But what makes a birthday special, even a party special, are the specialness of the people not the parting gifts or even the decorations.
If we did it together, if parents everywhere all joined forces and decided to stop. We could end this. We could end the waste. The hassle. The cycle of garbage.
We can end goodie bags.
Are you with me?
Ha ha ha! With you. I stopped birthday celebrations with parties and friends in 5th grade. You were born. Congrats. The whole world does not need to be involved.
Goody bags. I tried to make them useful. One year at a waterslide party in my yard I gave out beach towels. Of course a small number of kids made it possible. I also gave out $3 gift certificates to a local ice cream store one year.
The parties are fun but over rated. Never did get into the competition thing.
Glad I do not have daughters b/c of the whole sweet 16 party extravaganza. Too much $ and drama. Some of these sweet 16 parties are better than my wedding.
One of the best family birthday parties we ever had was for my son who was turning 5. Hot hot 97 degrees. The kid/adult water balloon fight was so great and unplanned. My husband secretly went on the roof and bombed all the unsuspecting guests on the ground below. I laughed so hard!
We still talk about it to this day, even my kids(who ate in HS). Now that’s a party. No goody bags.
Exactly – have you ever heard anyone say, remember that amazing goodie bag? Nope. It’s quite possible I’ve never even heard a child talk about how amazing their birthday party was. Expectations so high. Someone always ends up in tears.
I’m so with you!! I hate goodie bags and have worked hard to avoid giving out the “bag o’ crap” at the parties we host – one year we did CDs with Rory’s favorite songs. A year later people were still saying how their kids loved this song or that one from the CD. I thought that was cool. I rail against goodie bags, I’ll help you lead the way to a goodie-bag-less world. =)
Also, I laughed out loud at your idea of the goodie bags we should be giving to party hosts! great idea.
We did CD’s once and they also got a lot of props. Great minds think alike! Seriously considering bringing a bottle of wine for the parents instead of a birthday gift for the child – how do you think that would go over??!?!
I am with you! But are Cam and Collin?! All I can picture is the rest of the kids leaving the party with some great candy, and Cam and Collin being handed a zip lock bag of Virginia baked ham.
Either way, they will promptly put it on the kitchen table and forget about it…
PS. I know how to spell my grandson’s name, I was dictating!
That explains it…I was worried for a second.