Recently, GeekMom Lisa posted her rules for Thanksgiving to keep things low-stress for her and her family. It got me thinking about the Christmas traditions that we’ve shaped over the years which I often think of as low stress. Let’s be honest, it’s very easy for the holiday season, packed with shopping and special events (often split between sides of the family), to get out of control. In our family add an extra layer of two birthdays close to Christmas (we make it a point to not just blend those birthdays in with Christmas) and it’s a lot. Last year my mother-in-law and stepfather-in-law joined our holidays and my mother-in-law commented on how much she enjoyed having a relaxed holiday even if it’s not the way she did things as a kid or a parent. This is what we do to try to make things enjoyable for us:
No out-of-town traveling. Holidays are hard. Traveling with kids is hard. Whenever the two get thrown together it’s a dangerous game of whether or not the adults or kids melt down first. Once our oldest kid hit three or four and their gifts involved playsets with small pieces, we stopped going out of town on the big holiday. Kids want to be able to hang out and play with their new stuff, and trying to keep track of all those tiny pieces amongst all of the cousins was a no-win scenario. I also don’t want to play a game of explaining why Santa brings the cousins very different things. Kids do compare notes at school, of course, but when it’s all under the same exact tree it hits a little differently. Never mind the whole packing the car with the usual kid travel stuff and all of their gifts. When we made a point to see family in December, but not on Christmas Eve or Day, my sanity level went up about three sizes. Now, we give an open invite to the grandparents if they would like to come and share the holiday with us. Some years they have taken us up on this, others they have spent with other ends of the family. We don’t get our feelings hurt when it’s just us, and we enjoy their company when they are here.
Christmas Day is lazy. As a parent, I just ran my butt around for a month playing Santa and the elves between two birthdays. I call it the Holiday Gauntlet. By Christmas Day, I really don’t want to do anything that requires a lot of work, to be blatantly honest. We tend to spend Christmas Day in our new matching Christmas PJs the elves have dropped off with us while we watch Christmas movies, and our kids build their new LEGO sets or play their new video games. This is my moment of I survived the brunt of it all save one last birthday, and my kids really just want to enjoy and appreciate their new things. When the grandparents are here, we add their favorite movies to the mix, and they enjoy the kids sharing LEGOs and video games with them. It’s just much more relaxing for everyone involved, and I maintain that if you can’t actually enjoy a holiday, you’re doing it wrong.
No super fancy mid-day dinners. The fact that some people get up crazy early to start cooking a full turkey dinner after likely staying up late to do those last-minute holiday touches boggles my mind. I mean, if it really brings you holiday joy and you enjoy then, hey, do your thing. In our house, no one has the energy to go too crazy. My husband is our default cook, but we still keep it easy. We pick up pastries for Christmas morning, have a charcuterie board out during the day for people to graze on as they see fit, and dinner is nice without being crazy fancy. We pick up brisket from a local place before they close for the holiday, make some sides, and have a nice dinner without making things an even more stressful Thanksgiving sequel.
Decorating within energy levels. Some years we have lights up, others we don’t. We always put up a tree and we’ve found a collection of indoor things that can be put up without too much drama (especially as the kids are old enough to help). No one is pounding down our door to get pictures for a magazine, but we found a way to keep it festive and fun without burning ourselves out over it either.
Remember to not overdo it. My big thing here is not to criticize what traditions you do, it’s just to point out that there are options if you’re not getting to enjoy your holiday. I think it’s very easy to get so caught up in a cycle of what everyone else expects of you, that it gets hard for some parents to say, “This is not working for us” and just end up resigning themselves to a month full of crazy activities and high stress that hits its peak on Christmas Day. I promise you don’t have to do this. I get that your kid’s holiday dance recital is a lot less negotiable, but do you really need to do all of those cookie exchanges? Being present at the work party might also feel less negotiable, but is there another event that you can skip? There are local events we’ve done some years and not on others just based on what else was going on and how our energy levels are. The point is we shaped the holiday around us as much as possible rather than the other way around. My bottom line is that if it brings you joy and you love it then keep it even if it’s a fancy dinner, traveling, a more organized Christmas Day, or big decoration displays. We’ve just found that not traveling, not having a formal dinner, being lazy on the day of, and decorating what we feel up to is what actually helps us keep our sanity.
