EP 63: Say Hello to Stress-Free Holidays

Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner. Does getting ready for the holidays feel burdensome or overwhelming to you? In Episode 63 of Loving Life at Home, we’re discussing strategies to steer clear of stress, side-step the hustle-bustle, and enjoy a merry, meaningful, and blissfully peaceful advent season.

Simple Steps to a Stress-Free Christmas

I’ve heard from lots moms over the years with questions about how our family handles different aspects of Christmas – including gift giving, letter writing, meal planning, memory making, Santa explaining, and lots of other things that seem to vie for our attention – and also often add to our stress — during the month of December and even before.

Most recently – just about a week ago, in fact, I received a message from a mom who has a sizable family, just like I do. It reads:

And it’s okay to acknowledge that fact!

So if you really want to make the upcoming holiday season more relaxing – and less stressful – then you’ve got to identify what exactly is causing YOUR stress in the first place.

Usually, holiday stress arises from one or more of the following broad categories:

1 – Time Stressors: Overpacked schedules

Far too often, December flies by like a whirlwind, and we come to the end of it exhausted, over-spent, and feeling like we’ve failed to make meaningful connections with family in friends in our rush to pack as many memories as possible into four short weeks.

Problem is, something that excites and energizes one person may completely overwhelm someone else and make them miserable.

Some folks seem to thrive on all the hustle-bustle of the holidays, while it makes others want to retreat into their shell and hide out until January.  And more often than not, you have both extremes represented in one family – maybe even in one marriage.

So we’ll talk about how to navigate those differences, preserve some white space, save your sanity, and create holiday traditions that serve everyone in the family.

2 – Money Stressors: Limited Finances

Financial strain can make the holidays challenging, but just as necessity is the mother of invention, a tight budget can spawn all sorts of wonderful creativity.

And it’s a good thing that’s true– especially in our present economy, when it’s hard enough keeping food on the table or staying on top of bills. If you attempt to throw a bundle of store bought Christmas gifts for everyone and their brother into the mix, it may really feel like squeezing blood out of a turnip.

So I’ll share some ideas for scaling back, plus some surprising benefits from doing so.

3 – Relationship Stressors: Difficult/Demanding People

I dedicated an entire podcast to tips for getting along with difficult or demanding family members, so I’ll link that episode in the show notes instead of rehashing it here. And the last broad category is

4 – Comparison Stressors: Unrealistic Expectations

This is the stress and anxiety that comes from having unrealistic expectations, and we’ll talk about the source of these expectations and how to bring them back into line for everyone involved.

SO… once you identify the sources of your stress, you can come up with a game plan for defusing the stress and shifting your focus back to the real reason for the season – the blessed Savior whose birth we are supposed to be celebrating.

Six Steps to a Stress-Free Holiday

Complete transcript of episode 63

Don’t allow endless “to do” lists to steal your joy this holiday season. Don’t let all the commercialism eclipse the real meaning of Christmas. Even amid all the hustle-bustle and hype, you can find a little peace and tranquillity if you know where to look.

Here are the strategies I use to ward off the holiday rush and maintain my sanity during the weeks leading up to THANKSGIVING AND Christmas:

>>PLAN AHEAD

FIRST, when it comes to dealing with time stressors my best bit of advice is to plan ahead.

I’ve always been bad about procrastinating. I think I’ve shared before that when I was in high school, I’d often wait to start writing my term paper until the night before it was due. Which was really not smart.

I may have also mentioned that I sewed my own wedding dress. But what I neglected to tell you is that it was held together by straight pins in my bridal portraits, and I didn’t finish stitching the largest piece of lace onto the front of my gown until just a few hours before I wore it down the aisle.

And I cannot even begin to count the number of all nighters I’ve pulled over the years on Christmas eve as I’ve stayed awake trying to finish handcrafted gifts or wrap presents or complete last-minute shopping before the family gathered around the tree on Christmas morning.

But all that changed the year my oldest daughter was born. She was due in September, and since I already had one baby, I knew my time would not be my own…

The point is, a little advanced planning can do wonders for your mindset. The more you can accomplish before the holidays hit, the more you can relax and enjoy them once they arrive.

Don’t worry. You don’t have to start stockpiling gifts in January or have a full freezer by fall to benefit from this step. As of today, Christmas is just 10 weeks away. So pull out your calendar and make note of any commitments you have during that time period and make a short list of the tasks you’ll need to complete, then think through what each commitment will require and make additional notes about what will need to be done when for it all to go smoothly.

For instance, we have a lot of family coming to spend Thanksgiving with us this year.  I don’t know if we’ll do it this year, but In years past, we’ve all run a 5K Turkey Trot on Thankgiving morning. Which means I had to have tables set and most of the cooking done in advance if I wanted to run too and still have dinner ready by noon.

Also, several of our kids have requested that we stuff Christmas letters together while they’re home for Thanksgiving. And for that to happen, I’ll have to finish writing the letter by mid-November, make copies, order cards, and buy stamps and envelopes so that we can set up our assembly line on the Friday after Thanksgiving and finish the job before the out-of-towners have to drive back to their respective homes that weekend.

You’ll also want to PLAN AHEAD if you’ve taken on responsibility for holiday events in your community. I have friends who help with a local production of the Nutcracker every December – and they’ve been doing that for YEARS — so the first part of the month is completely taken over by their involvement in that ballet performance. Or maybe you’re hosting a Christmas party for your husband’s coworkers or a moms prayer group or your child’s kindergarten class. Don’t wait for the last minute. Do as much of the prep work as you can well in advance: make the guest list, order the invitations, plan the menu, print out the party games, buy the favors now, and you’ll have that much less to do then when so many other things are vying for your attention.

>> PRESERVE MARGIN

In addition to planning ahead, I recommend you take whatever steps are necessary to preserve margin throughout the holidays.

I’ve had to accept the fact that I can’t do everything. I’ll run myself ragged (and, even more importantly, I’ll my family ragged) if I try. So instead of attempting to squeeze some sort of holiday activity into every waking moment, I eliminate stress by intentionally leaving a little white space on our calendar. I really do this all year long, but I’ve found it’s especially important to preserve some margin during the holiday season.

Those empty squares on my calendar represent the quiet evenings we’ll spend at home reading in front of a crackling fire or working a puzzle around the kitchen table or listening to Christmas music while we decorate the tree or watching It’s a Wonderful Life or some other of our favorite holiday video for the umpteenth time.

>> PICK AND CHOOSE

Another good way to deal with those time stressors is to pick and choose.

Note that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If you’re the person who wants to print a bucket list of Christmas activities as long as your arm and tick one or two things off every day all season long, have at it. But if you’re married to a homebody, you’d better makes sure a lot of those activities can be enjoyed within the walls of your own house. Lots of our favorite traditions fall into the category of things we can do without leaving home: decorating the Christmas tree, making hot cocoa, listening to Christmas carols, watching Christmas movies, making Christmas candy, handcrafting ornaments.

Some of these things may sound fun to you too and some may not. That’s okay. You don’t have to enjoy all the same things my family enjoys.

The important thing is that you spend the holidays doing the things that are most meaningful to you and your family. Don’t feel pressured to do anything just because somebody else – or even everybody else — is doing it.

If having a bucket list stresses you out, then skip it. Or gather your kids together and take a poll to find out which traditions, old or new, they’d like to observe and which they’re willing to let go.

We did this several years ago and generated a master list, which we print it off every year and check off various activities as time allows. We don’t try to do them all, just the ones that sound good to us at the time and fit our schedules. There is a printable version of our list (which I’ll link in the show notes if you want to take a peek at it), but I’d encourage you to make your own. Some of the things we do will not appeal to you, and vice versa.

In fact, some of the things our family has traditionally done that were both time consuming and expensive – like going to Holiday in the Park at Six Flags – ranked rather low on most of our children’s lists. And many of the traditions that don’t cost a cent – like rewatching favorite holiday movies together as a family or re-reading all our old Christmas letters  or driving around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights– topped the charts for nearly everyone.

That doesn’t mean we never go to Six Flags. Fiesta Texas runs a great special through Groupon or the Book of Free where I can buy tickets in batches of six to eight for well under $100, and so we’ve taken advantage of that offer several times in the past 6-7 years. But if I miss the promotion or we can’t fit it into the schedule, I don’t worry about it too much, as doing so is not essential to having a wonderful Christmas in any of our minds.

>> BUY LESS

As for dealing with tight finances, one solution is to buy less.

If you’ve ever read Laura Ingall’s Wilder’s accounts of Christmas in the Big Woods or on the prairie, or of the Christmases of her husband’s childhood, you know kids don’t need all the latest and greatest popular plastic toys or electronic gadgets to be happy and content. Laura and Almanzo were thrilled with finding an orange and a peppermint stick – or maybe a pocket knife — in their stocking on Christmas morning.  

People assume Christmas must be crazy at our house with so many children, because they take whatever they’re doing with one or two kids and multiply it by a factor of 6-12. But that really isn’t the case.

It’s amazing how little pressure you feel to overspend when you aren’t exposed to all the malls and television commercials. I avoid getting out on Black Friday like the plague, preferring instead to shop online in the privacy of my own home. And by using Rakuten, I earn cash back on every purchase, plus it’s all delivered straight to my door.

As a result, our family really celebrates a pretty low-key Christmas when it comes to gifts. That was a necessity in the beginning, because my husband was still in school and we were living on such a shoestring budget. But my kids are used to getting just a stocking plus one gift, and I don’t think I’d change that custom even if we had all the money in the world.

The financial strain of overspending at Christmas time is only part of the problem. There’s also the stress of figuring out where to put all those gifts for all those people once they’ve been received.

Which is why I really favor consumable gifts – like edible treats or art supplies — or experiences – like special trips or museum memberships.

I’ve gotten lots of letters over the years asking for specifics on how we handle gift giving with so many children. One mom wrote:

I’ll link my full reply in the show notes, but the gist of what I said was this: When our kids were little, I gave each of them a stocking filled with small gifts chosen especially for that child, then I bought one family gift for everybody to share (maybe a new game to play together or a book to read aloud. One year, I bought a slackline, strung it between two trees and promised $10 to the first child who learned to walk across the entire thing without falling).

I’ll admit, that single family gift looked a little lonesome under the tree by itself, so I began wrapping the Christmas picture books we already owned to put under the tree as well, then we’d open one book each day and read it together as a family.

I know a single gift and a stocking may seem like a scant Christmas celebration to a lot of folks, but it works well for our family. It helps keep our focus OFF what we we’re going to get, and places it more ON what we can do. Not just on Christmas morning, but all month long through service projects, letter writing, bell ringing, carol singing, and all sorts of other memory making.

Once  our kids started getting older and wanted to participate in the gift giving, we began drawing names for a “Secret Santa” gift exchange – at their request, because purchasing gifts for so many was a bit overwhelming for them, too, so now, each person gets one gift from a sibling. They’ve even included Mom & Dad in the exchange, and using the free Elfster app makes things super easy for all of us.

But we also started to brainstorm ways our family could be a blessing to others during the Christmas season. You can do the same by making a list of service projects or acts of random kindness and refer to it year after year. You may not always get to every item on the list, but the process of trying will help change your family’s focus from the gifts under the tree to the people around it.

If limited finances are contributing to the holiday stress you feel, Communicate with your family in well in advance that you’ll need to scale back this year, whatever scaling back looks like for you. If you normally buy 10 gifts for each child, cut that number in half. Or do as some of my friends do and give four gifts: Something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. That times 12 would still make my head spin, so I’m going to stick to my single gift and a stocking — but I know that poem works well for lots of families.

Maybe money isn’t an issue for you at all, but space is. Does trying to find a home for new gifts stress anybody else out? Or is that just me? Maybe it’s more manageable for a family with fewer children, but with 12 kids, it can be overwhelming. If you are already busting at the seams, you may want to scale back for that reason.

Especially considering the fact that all the best toys don’t wear out: Lincoln logs, building blocks, Duplo, wooden train sets. As I’ve mentioned before, the same tubs of these classic toys that entertained by first few kids served all their siblings just as well and are now delighting my grandchildren. Once you’re stocked up, you’re set, and there isn’t a real need to buy more every year for three decades of child rearing.

>> ENLIST HELP

If all the kids are still at home, assign chores for cleaning or decorating the house and preparing meals or getting ready for company. I have a free printable Age-Appropriate Chore Chart I’ll link in today’s show notes.

If your kids are grown and gone and just coming to visit over the holidays, let them know what you’ll be serving and them to bring sides, salads or desserts to accompany the meal.

Everybody contributes. Everybody eats. Everybody cleans up, like the little red hen. Mom shouldn’t slave away in the kitchen all day while the rest of the family relaxes in the living room. Don’t stand at the kitchen and stew over the status quo. If nobody volunteers to help, Ask for it. And if they do volunteer, don’t shoo them away, but accept that kind gesture and give them a job to do.

And that brings us to that last stressor, which is caused by unrealistic expectations. Sometimes these come from without: Extended family that expects you to spend every holiday with them, and so Thanksgiving or Christmas becomes a huge chore of rushing from house to house to house trying to keep everyone happy.

Sometimes, the pressure comes from within: You’ve envisioned the perfect magical Christmas, fueled by all the lovely images you’ve seen on Pinterest or Instagram, and you feel like a failure when your own family’s Christmas doesn’t measure up.

In both these cases, don’t be afraid to reject the Christmas traditions that you find burdensome and adopt some that help you focus on the real reason for the season.

If you don’t like turkey or have never learned to cook it properly, you don’t have to serve it for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I’ve been known to serve lasagna or fajitas with all the trimmings for Thanksgiving instead.  Even if you do decide to serve the traditional meal, think through your sides. If nobody in your family likes sweet potatoes or green bean casserole, then don’t bother. Or assign those dishes to somebody who cares. I’ve never been a huge fan of cranberry sauce (at least not the canned jelly stuff that was always part of the feast we had at my grandma’s house, but one of my daughters loves cranberries and makes an absolutely delicious sauce from scratch every year.

Same goes for making the rounds during the holidays. If you dream of being able to enjoy a leisurely Christmas at home and avoid holiday traffic, then make arrangements to see family members a few weeks before Christmas, or alternate between families: Spend Thanksgiving with one side of the family and Christmas with the other one year, then flip it the next.

When I was growing up, we celebrated Christmas at home on Christmas Eve morning, then would drive to Oklahoma that afternoon and celebrate Christmas again with my dad’s family the very next day. For years, I never knew the difference.

Now that several of my children are grown and married, we are trying to navigate holidays with them. And I’m trying to keep my expectations low. If the kids want to spend Christmas at our house, I’m obviously thrilled. But I also know my daughters-in-law come from smaller families where their absence would doubtlessly leave a more noticeable hole. So we’ve tried to be very accommodating and not get hurt feelings, even if they choose to spend every Christmas at the in-law’s house. I wouldn’t want them to knock themselves out trying to drive back and forth on the 25^th.  Maybe because I grew up having a wonderful celebration with my family the day before Christmas, or because I married a physician that sometimes has to take call on December 25^th, but celebrating on the exact day is not really that important to me to make a stink if it doesn’t happen. We do our best to see all our children in the weeks leading up to Christmas and to celebrate early with the ones who won’t be able to make it home for the holidays, and that’s worked well for us.

As for internal pressures and high expectations of how Christmas should go, I’d urge you to leave off comparing your situation to anybody else’s. Don’t feel like you have to jump on the bandwagon of every trend you spot on social media.

I love seeing photos of families in matching Christmas pajamas. I think those are adorable. But that wasn’t a trend, and we probably couldn’t have afforded it anyway, back when my kids were all little and still wore pajamas. And now, most of my guys don’t sleep in pjs anyway – I know for sure my husband wouldn’t wear them in a million years – so I probably missed the opportunity to ever have such a photo. But that’s okay.  Maybe this year, I’ll just get matching flannels for me and my youngest daughter. She’d probably like that.

My point is, if it causes you to stumble into grief or envy or worry that you somehow don’t measure up to look at photos of other people wearing matching pajamas when you, for whatever reason, can’t – then stay off Pinterest and Instagram.

If seeing their beautifully decorated homes or watching the handcrafted ornament tutorials inspires you, great. Watch in moderation and use that inspiration as a jumping off place to be more creative in your own home. But if seeing those photos and reels makes you feel resentful or inadequate, then delete that app from your phone and spare yourself the grief.

Again, we are all different. I love to decorate the house for Christmas. In fact, I left one tree up in my bedroom all year long and just switched out ornaments for every new season –ornaments my youngest daughter and I worked on handcrafting together all year long. It was a fun and creative outlet.

But one of my daughters in law confessed to me a couple of weeks ago that it totally stresses her out to even thing about decorating the house for Christmas. And I can understand why. She has four little children. When I had four little children, my Christmas décor was minimal, as well. We had only one Christmas tree and had  to be careful to put only non-breakable decorations on the lower half of that to make sure the babies didn’t destroy any heirloom ornaments.

It wasn’t worth the hassle to do much more than that. There is a season for everything under heaven, and the season of small children and the season of elaborate Christmas décor are rarely one in the same.

Which brings me to my last tip:

>> BE FLEXIBLE

Even when you scale back and plan ahead and preserve margin and invest only in those holiday activities that are most meaningful to your family, life will sometimes throw you a curve. Like the year we got chicken pox at Thanksgiving and had to be quarantined until New Year’s. Another Christmas, it was a stomach virus that took us out of commission. And one winter an ice storm knocked out our electricity for three days.

You can’t let stuff like that derail you or dampen your joy. None of those things were much fun at the time, but they were certainly memorable. We made adjustments and still had wonderful, Christ-focused celebrations. Though we had to miss many of our traditional activities those years, we just appreciated them all the more the next Christmas when things were a little more “normal.” Attitude makes all the difference. Here’s hoping and praying these tips will help keep your attitude well-adjusted and any anxiety at bay during the upcoming holiday season. Do what you can NOW to take more off your plate THEN.