It’s officially that time of year where Christmas music and items fill all the spaces on the radio, on tv, the stores, and our homes. My kids think it’s absolutely hilarious to sing Christmas carols to me in July and they are now upping their game into talking about decorations and lights and wishlists and parties. Lately I’ve been feeling the scrooge vibes about it all to be honest and I can’t say I like it. I was in the shower thinking about Christmas trees.. you know the whole real tree vs. fake tree dilemma, when I got a whole pile of clarity about why I’ve got the scrooge vibes. It all comes down to one little word.. expectations.
Mostly my own expectations for the record and my ability to meet them. I have a long list of events to attend, people to visit, things to buy, food to prepare, songs to play, things to do, that I feel obligated to partake in to make Christmas. Traditions and expectations I’m not even completely sure where I got them from or why I do them. While I do genuinely enjoy a lot of the things, the sheer volume of them can be stress inducing and actually sucks the fun right out of the whole season. Hence the scrooge effect.
I seem to get to this place every year, and while I’ve cut back significantly on the holiday hooplah and stress, it usually ends with me doing most of the things anyway with a promise to do better next year. So this year in November I am making a conscious effort to actually do better in the current. This year I will pare down the list of holiday must do/ buy things significantly to leave much more room for enjoyment and appreciation of the things I choose to keep.
After having kids, the expectations for things we needed to do at the holidays went way, way up. There were two families of people who wanted to visit with them, we would essentially have three Christmas morning gift openings, I’d have double the amount of people to shop for, double the family functions to attend, decisions to make about where we will eat the all coveted Christmas dinner. Throw in some fomo from seeing all the cool things everyone else is doing with their kids for the holiday season, and that damn elf and it became just plain exhausting. I was trying to do all the things and please all the people and what I’d actually done is made myself into a little stress ball for the entire season.
Think about the things you really value and cherish about the holiday season from your childhood. For me I have such vivid memories of decorating the tree with my mom with Dolly Parton playing. I also loved the times we went to my Nan’s house for Christmas dinner with all my cousins around eating jello and ice cream for dessert.
I don’t remember much about any of the gifts. I can’t say that having a stressed out mom trying to cram 10 ‘fun’ activities or visits into one day while rushing from one place to the next was on that list of holiday magic either, but that’s what my out to lunch expectations for the holidays turned into.. endless shopping, endless activities, endless lists of to-do’s that never seemed to get to done, and a whole lot of joy-sucking stress. All this while trying to put on a cheery outside and make some happy memories. Merry Christmas to me. The worst part to that is that I had pretty well done it to myself and that while I’ve improved a great deal with how I approach the holidays, I still over-commit and put too much value on what’s expected of me.
The simple act of trying to make everything important, means that nothing becomes important. Feel free to cut your holiday activities down and really be there for the ones you choose to engage in. Forget the guilt and the worrying about what other people want for you to do. Pick the things that matter and make you feel good and ditch the rest. Don’t want to visit your in-laws? Don’t. Let your partner go. Not interested in buying a new dress to go to a work event at a stuffy formal venue where you feel uncomfortable and count down the minutes til you can leave? Don’t go. Don’t want to go get drunk with your friends on Tibb’s eve and spend your Christmas eve hungover? Don’t. Not interested in freezing your butt off and arguing with the kids for 20 minutes about dressing for the weather to go and watch a parade that they don’t even care to see? Skip it. I promise the world will go on.
By skipping all the crap you don’t want to do, you free up so much time and energy for the things that do matter. You can really put some time and thought into your Christmas cards, you can watch Christmas movies and laugh and snuggle together, you can just sit and enjoy looking at the tree, actually having a non-rushed visit with a friend or family member, whatever feels good to do. By doing less, you have much more space to fully be present for the things and events that matter instead of rushing through them to check it off the list.
There’s a whole lot of room for cutting back on the shopping and gift-giving too. My son’s first couple Christmases I went all out on gifts for him. I remember one in particular where I spent thousands on toys, clothes, all the things educational and fun and practical. He lost interest in opening gifts by about gift number 3 and he spent the entire day playing with a bag of cat treats. The last thing our kids need is to spend three hours opening mountains of gifts. That is not what the season is about and yet so many of us go out and make it exactly about that. It is impossible for a person to appreciate and enjoy that number of things at once. Every year since then, I have scaled the shopping for them way back and we are all happier and more appreciative for it. Getting every single thing we think they might possibly want won’t make for happy, content kids. It actually makes for the opposite.
Some of the holiday things just need a new mindset to go along with them and don’t need to be cut at all. Instead of decorating my home to look like a pinterest post, buying the perfect decor pieces for each corner, fretting about how it looks, scrubbing every nook and cranny for weeks leading up to the day (which can I tell you with two boys is completely futile), generally stressing my self out over nothing.. this year I won’t. I’ve decided to check out of that whole rat race. This year I will take the items I have, turn some Christmas music on panic and let the kids go to town on the place. I tried this Halloween and it turned out lovely. Did I have pumpkins hanging from my kitchen cupboards right where I make my coffee? Yes. Normally I’d be annoyed at that, but I just kept the image of Landon’s excitement for the week it was there and I eventually got over it. Did I have skulls in my bathroom? Yes. Might of freaked me out one morning, but again, rolling with it. Did I have a whole mess of mish-mashed decorations piled in my living room window? Yes. Were things symmetrical and pinterest worthy? Nope. Was my sweet boy completely pleased with his creation? Yes he was. Did we have a great time doing it? Mostly. He had the time of his life. Turns out clutter and chaos makes me a little anxious, but I’m working on it. Seeing his little face and how proud he was was 100% worth that discomfort though. Letting go that control and the idea of perfection was challenging, but so rewarding to move through.
I could go on and on about this topic. So much of the stress I put myself in for the holiday season seems so completely foolish after the amount of things I have walked through this last couple years. This stress is completely in my control to fix though and I need to actively choose a different way this season. I can re-adjust my expectations, worry less about pleasing everyone else, shorten my to-do lists tremendously and go about enjoying the season so much more fully. I hope you can take the time to consider how you’re contributing to your own stress this season and make some new choices to leave more room for real peace and joy.
Lots of love
Dawn
Tax Wise 