I’ve been wanting to take part in the “Works for Me Wednesday” blog carnival hosted by Shannon over at Rocks in my Dryer. The practicality of it makes a lot of sense to me. Unfortunately, I’ve been slow to jump in and have just decided to do it today! Of course, while I have lots of neat ideas, I discovered that there’s been an impromptu “Christmasy” theme announced. So I’ll try to comply.
What have I done to de-stress Christmas? First, I’ll have to tell you what “stresses” me, and then go from there. The biggest thing we struggle with is over-indulgence. It could be over-indulgence of food, sensory overload, trying to fit too much into the schedule, or (for the children) too many presents, too fast!
There are a couple of reasons why the gifting frenzy bothers me. First, in a season where we as Christians are claiming to celebrate Christ’s birth, we’re too easily drawn into focusing on ourselves and what we’re getting, rather than what we’re giving (and what we’ve already been given–the gift of Jesus!) Not that there’s much we can do about that–we (as parents) want to bless our children, as do all of our family members. That’s a good thing! But when we go from one party to the next and open gift after gift after gift, it’s easy to lose that spirit of thankfulness that God would want us to have. I’m sure I’m not the only parent to notice this.
So what works for me? Well, this year we tried celebrating Christmas in November. Jenna from “Choosing Home” commented that she’s considered celebrating Christmas in January for their family! Although it’d be too late for the rest of y’all to celebrate “Christmas in November,” maybe you could space out your celebrations and set some special time aside for your nuclear family to enjoy and appreciate one another and focus on the best blessing–Jesus Christ. Maybe it won’t be until after the new year–but does it really matter? We’re finding that even though we’ve done our “family” Christmas early, there’s still plenty of presents under the tree for the children to open on Christmas day. And having cut back on the amount that they’ll be opening all-at-once, hopefully they will be able to enjoy their gifts that much more, and be more thankful for each one and for each person who gave them.
One of my best Christmas celebrations was on New Year’s Day…for some reason the family couldn’t all be together until then and I have to tell you, the stress that I avoided because I didn’t have the same ‘deadline’ as all of the other shoppers was magnificent. On Christmas day we really appreciated our Savior 🙂
This year, I packed an Advent stocking with all of the gifts my son would have gotten in his Christmas stocking (I lo-o-ove stocking gifts so I always go overboard…but he always just rips open the tissue paper and tosses the stocking treasure aside). Now everyday he can enjoy a special little treat for the day & all month long. Christmas morning can be relaxed!
I hadn’t thought of the upside of de-stressing the holiday shopping–you could even hit the after-Christmas sales! 🙂 And I love the idea of opening stocking stuffers as Advernt gifts–thanks for sharing!