Renew You!

Holiday Stress Less Tips

Dashing through the snow,

With a list that seems to grow.

Down the road we speed,

Hurry! Get what we need.

First, there is all the food,

Then, décor to set the mood.

Make sure everybody has a gift,

Or someone will be miffed.

Jingle bells! Jingle bells!

Just get out of my way.

There is so much I must do,

It’s the holiday!

Does this sound like your holiday season? Do you feel like the time between Thanksgiving and New Years Day is just a blur? How about making this year different? Slow down. Relax. Enjoy the holidays. Here are some ideas on how to do just that.

Decide which traditions are important. Keep those. Drop or modify the others. For instance, if baking cookies is something that is done every year, do they have to be made from scratch or would it be acceptable if frozen dough or cookie mix were used? Or perhaps just make your “special” cookies and skip the rest. Do holiday cards and gifts have to be mailed? Try sending e-cards. Shop online and have the gifts shipped directly to the recipient. Could the gift list be trimmed? Suggest to the people being dropped that the amount of money that would have been spent go to a favorite charity.

Get everyone to pitch in and share the work. For example, each family could bring a side dish or dessert and the host family could make the turkey for the holiday meal. Or each family member cleans and decorates a room or section of the house and then at the end everybody gets together to string holiday lights.

Consider trading tasks with someone else. If there is some aspect of the holidays that you really enjoy, see if there is somebody you know that might have a different preference or talent and trade tasks. For instance, if you really enjoy shopping but wish you could leave the decorating to someone else, it just might be that your neighbor who spends all day Black Friday decorating his yard would be happy to decorate your yard if you would do his shopping. After all, you will be at that giant superstore at 4am anyway. 

Celebrate holidays at different times of the year. Anyone who has ever had to go to his mom’s open house cocktail party, to her mom’s midnight church service with hot chocolate and snacks, to his dad’s holiday morning breakfast, to her dad’s holiday brunch, back to her mom’s afternoon holiday dinner, then back to his Mom’s evening holiday dinner, making sure to make a stop at his sister’s and her cousin’s somewhere in between and do it all with two young children in tow will find this to be the best idea of all. Spread the people and the events throughout the year. The same can be done for Thanksgiving. Have one traditional dinner in November, and then have others during the year. Not only is this less stressful, but it’s also easier on the budget.

What are your ideas? How do you have a less stressful holiday season?