8 Tips to De-Stress the Holidays
Thanksgiving in the USA has come and gone, and hopefully you're still
counting your blessings and basking in the gratitude of enough-ness.
Even in the hard years, there is so much to be grateful for. And the
practice of gratitude really does change our experience of life, so it's
worth practicing until it becomes automatic.
And now, at least
in the US, there's holiday music in the stores and December is upon us.
Even if you find that exciting, it's probably a bit stressful as well.
You already have a full life; where will you find time to handle the
extra tasks of creating a December holiday, whichever one you celebrate?
But
December doesn't have to be stressful. It can be a time for cozy
connection and deep joy, whatever your personal beliefs. The key is
deciding what kind of experience you want to create, and meshing your
expectations with your family's.
Imagine it's next January 1.
Won't it be terrific if you find yourself rested, refreshed, and
contented with your life? Imagine being able to:
- Use the time off at the end of December to have some wonderful, deep time with each member of your immediate family. Your whole family will start the year feeling energized and connected by how you've spent these days together.
- Give presents that delight the receiver, and therefore delight you. You don’t go over budget, and most of the time your present is something you make or do for the recipient-- with your child, easily and joyfully.
- Feel healthy and maintain a steady weight. Instead of overeating, you feed your hungry heart with connection to others, and with giving to others. You spend time outdoors. You cook healthy food. In short, you nurture your own body and soul, as well as your children's.
- Find deep meaning this year in brightening the season for others. Your kids begin to discover the spirit of the season and feel the gift of being angels to others.
- Feel clarity, going into the new year, about the ways you want to make your life different in the new year. You even make a plan that will be easy to stick to, that will help you change ONE important habit.
Does
this fantasy seem alluring, but impossible? It isn’t. More and more
families are saying no to the Holiday Frenzy and inviting connection,
joy and reflection into their homes in December. Here's how.
1. Decide what’s really important to you and just say No to everything else.
We
all have full lives the other eleven months of the year. Adding an
elaborate agenda to accomplish during December can only send your
household into a tailspin and your blood pressure through the roof.
The guaranteed result is tantrums from the kids and tears for you.
There
is a simple answer, if you’re willing to be ruthlessly honest with
yourself about what you can actually handle. Start by sitting quietly
for ten minutes with your eyes closed, seeing in your mind the scenes
you want to create this December. Then open your eyes and list your
priorities. Be realistic. If you want homemade presents, you probably
won’t also have a clean and orderly house. Decide what really matters
to you.
Next, sit down with your partner, if you have one, and your kids if
they’re old enough. Serve something delicious that reminds you of the
season to come – holiday cookies, or eggnog. Talk about everyone’s
ideas of what would be a perfect holiday season.
What do you
need to do so it feels like Christmas, or Chanukah, or Kwanza, or the
Winter Solstice, to you? Maybe you always decorate the house with
greenery, or bake cookies. Maybe you’d like to make presents, or
volunteer to deliver meals to someone who’s housebound.
Get
out the family calendar, and think about when these things will get
done. What events do you expect to attend? Do the hard work of
writing down the things you agree to do, and saying no to whatever
doesn’t nurture your family.
Agree on how much time is to be
spent with the immediate family, how much with extended family, and how
much with your community, such as your annual tree trimming or Chanukah
party, or church and school events.
Just say no to holiday
events that don’t hold meaning for you, including most work events. If
you must spend time at work-related holiday events, be sure to
acknowledge them as work time that’s cutting into the family time you
want to prioritize this season. Take other time off to make up for
it. For instance, you might leave work early to pick your child up
after school for a special afternoon together doing something
meaningful and holiday related.
If your kids are old enough
that they want to spend time with their friends rather than just
family, terrific. Plan now to include their friends in any events
where it feels appropriate – baking pies for the local soup kitchen, or
making holiday cards, or gathering greenery to decorate the house.
Your kids will probably jump at the chance for a party, even if it’s a
party to make presents. Click here for a list of easy holiday presents kids can make.
This family meeting about the
Holidays is a great time to express what YOU most want this holiday –
special time to connect with each member of your family.
2. Prioritize Connecting with your Family.
Now
you have a sense of what you’re actually going to do this December.
Your first rule is not to do holiday tasks alone, unless you feel
nurtured by them. If you like nothing better than to put on music and
fill the house with good smells, then I wish you happy baking. But
don’t set yourself up to feel like a martyr at midnight, when you find
yourself bleary-eyed and facing a sink full of dirty dishes. Always
find a partner for these holiday tasks. It’s a great opportunity for
fun with family members, and the kids love the one-on-one time with
mom. And if you can’t recruit anyone, consider that maybe you don’t
actually need to do more decorating, or baking, or whatever, if it
isn’t important to anyone else. Who are you trying to impress, after all?
If your kids are too young to
help, then it becomes even more important to limit what you do. What
they want this holiday season is meaning and connection, not perfect
decorations, or lots of events, or even, ultimately, presents. Your
kids need you to be in a good mood, ready to make merry and make
meaning. Keep it simple. Don’t try to create some glossy magazine
vision of the holiday. In parenting, your mood matters more to your
kids than anything else.
Hopefully, you already have family
traditions that give you special time alone with each family member,
such as a father-daughter brunch once a month at their favorite diner.
You can make your holidays more meaningful, though, with this golden
opportunity for one-on-one time. Make a plan with each family member
to do something delicious just with them.
Some ideas for “dates” with your kids:
- Work together to make a present for another family member
- Bake cookies for her class party
- Work out together – it’s a great antidote to holiday calories and stress
- Go for walks together in a part of town where you can admire the holiday decorations, or out in the country to gather greenery.
3. Reject commercialism.
None
of the holidays we observe in December are designed to include
purchasing things from stores. Each is an opportunity to celebrate –
the birth of the Savior, the Seven Principles of Kwanza, the return of
the light with the Solstice, and the right to worship as we choose and
the miracle of faith symbolized by the Chanukah lights.
The
pressures of commercialization do a disservice to these sacred days, to
our wallets, and to our children. Our children have been trained to think
of the winter holidays as a time for loot, beginning when we put them on
a bearded stranger's lap and have them recite a list of possessions
they covet. Kids who watch TV have an especially
difficult time, as the seasonal ads whip them into a frenzy of desire
that can only crash and burn. Their first question upon
returning to school is usually “What’ja get?”
After having spent years buying too many presents – originally one for each night of Chanukah – our family settled into making each of the eight nights meaningful in it’s own way. One night is the big present night, where the kids each get one “storebought” gift. One night is “Homemade presents” night. One night we always throw a Chanukah party, another night we end up at a friend's house. One night is Tzedaka night, when we discuss good causes and donate money to them. Each night is special in its own way, and presents take a back seat. We work hard to de-commercialize what can so easily become a feast of more, more, more, rather than a feast of lights.
De-commercializing Christmas is even more challenging. I know families who give three presents to their child for Christmas: one to read, one to wear, one to play with. Others give a present from the parents and a present from Santa. Add a stocking, and time to play with your child, and it's plenty. The gifts you do give will be treasured.
Set a budget for each gift,
add them up to be sure you can handle the total, and really stick to
it. You might try catalog or online shopping, so you can do it at
night without the kids around, avoid the exhaustion and crowds, and
diminish the importance of holiday shopping in your family life.
You’re also more likely to stick to your budget.
Some families de-commercialize the holidays by making presents. It isn’t free – you have to buy supplies –
and it takes time, but it is cheaper, more fun, more meaningful, and often
more pleasing to the recipient than a "bought" gift.
If you choose
to make presents, sit down with a list of people and decide what you’re
making and how long each present will take. Your goal is to delight
your giftees with a token of your affection, not to garner status
points or exhaust yourself. One strategy is to make big batches of
something that most folks will enjoy -- fudge, or bath salts -- so that
many of your gifts can be made in one Saturday, with the help of your child.
If your whole
family is making presents – and what kid doesn’t like to make presents?
– try scheduling some afternoons or evenings when everyone is working
on presents. You can count on having to help the younger members of
the family, but it’s worth it. If you make this a family tradition,
you’ll find that they get more independent each year in making ever
more lovely presents. Click here for presents you can make easily with your kids.
4. Create traditions that make merry, make meaning, and bring your family closer.
Children
love tradition and ritual. Repetition, the comfort of belonging, the
sense of wonder, magic, and celebration -- traditions nurture kids and
parents alike, and create a sense of shared meaning. They connect
families.
Kids need the security of repeated traditions, and
they’ll want you to repeat this year anything you’ve “always done” in
the past. Honor those requests and savor those moments.
But
why not also create new traditions that work for your family? It’s
simple. Try something new, and if you like it, repeat it. Then begin
to talk about it and look forward to it with the whole family.
Eventually, that tradition will take on a life of its own and will
become a sustaining part of your family's culture.
Holiday traditions that will have meaning for your
family are plentiful; your job is to find the ones that feel best to
everyone and are simplest to pull off. Any of these traditions can
become a party if you want to include your kids’ friends, and often
kids prefer that as they get older. Click here for a list of great Family Holiday Traditions.
5. Live the spirit of the season by giving to others.
It’s
hard for kids not to get greedy at the holidays, especially if they’re
encouraged to make long lists of their desired presents. One answer,
of course, is to limit kids to one store-bought gift (although often a
grandparent will add another.) But what we really want for our kids is not for them to feel deprived, but to find their own
holiday spirit and discover the joy of giving to others. Did you know
that the experience of giving actually activates an area of the brain
that gives us physical pleasure?
Generosity starts with a
feeling of having plenty -- emotionally, even more than materially --
and develops as we have experiences of making others happy by giving to
them. Our job as parents is to help our kids to have those
experiences. Click here for Twelve Ways to Help Your Child Find Her Inner Angel (and the joy of giving).
Eventually,
if your child is lucky, she’ll learn from experience that making
someone else happy by giving to them really is more rewarding than
receiving a gift herself. But that wisdom is something that usually
develops only after one has lived long enough to feel truly gifted by
life.
6. Take time as a family for reflection.
Beyond
the obvious opportunity for spiritual reflection and embodying the
spirit of giving, the holidays are a great time for families to
reflect, examine, and appreciate their lives together. It’s
traditional at Kwanzaa to rededicate oneself to living a principled
life. The rest of us usually rely on the New Year’s tradition of making
a resolution, which is generally less than effective because one resolution is not enough to change a habit (that takes at least 30 days of sustained effort!). Here are a
couple of ideas for rituals to extend this practice:
• Ask
each family member to write down one thing they want to leave behind in
the old year, and throw it into the fire (or use a candle to set it on
fire in a firesafe pan). At the same time, they can write down one
thing they want to create more of in their lives, and put that in a
safe, secret place. It’s even more effective if they write a plan for
creating this, and review their plan daily for 30 days as they create a new habit.
• Start a Count
Your Blessings scroll. Take a roll of adding machine tape and let
everyone write on it something they’re grateful for. The scroll can be
taped in lengths around your house as a blessing, like a Tibetan prayer
flag.
7. If you go on vacation, be sure it recharges and reconnects your family.
Some
of us look forward to the kids’ school vacations as a chance to leave
town in search of warm weather or winter sports. That can give you
plenty of chances for family connection, especially if you forgo
organized evenings in favor of family board games. What you want to
avoid, of course, is racing around before you leave, getting stressed
out by a busy trip, and returning home in need of a vacation. Kids
tend to get cranky and stressed with travel and schedule changes, so
plan to do less, rather than more.
8. Cultivate enough-ness by nurturing yourself.
We
approach the holidays each year with the secret hope that our life will
be transformed. Somehow, our home will become picture perfect,
professionally decorated and worthy of a magazine spread. Our homemade
gifts will be the envy of the neighborhood. Our children, perfect
angels, will be baking for the soup kitchen, starring in the holiday
pageant, and certainly never bickering. We, of course, will look and
feel fabulous, basking in the warm glow of the season as we greet our
guests.
It helps to make these fantasies conscious, so we can
let go of them without guilt. I find I have to remind myself
repeatedly throughout the holiday season that my happy mood and time
with my kids is more important than my vision of all I could “give”
them – even the educational, values-laden experiences!
Media images of the
“perfect” holidays can be discouraging, since real life
never looks like that. Some families agree to drastically reduce TV
time during the holidays, to reduce the consumer pressure, but also to
use the time for family games and other more intimate connecting.
In
addition to all the other ideas in this article, I encourage you to
find ways to nurture yourself over the holidays. Go for long walks
outdoors, take hot baths, work out at the gym, do yoga, trade massages
with your spouse or a friend, cook good wholesome food. The more full
you feel inside, body and soul, the less you’ll need to pursue the
holiday frenzy. And the more you and your family will find yourselves
making meaning, as well as making merry.
