Keeping Christmas Well

I love the holidays.  The entire season.  It really begins November 1st, and lasts all the way to January 1st of the next year (and longer if you celebrate Epiphany, also called Three Kings Day).  I love the decorating, listening to Christmas music, cooking and baking, lighting the Advent candles, the general feeling of joy and love, the increased focus on the Savior.

I get caught up in all of it--even the stressful parts like not getting everything wrapped before Christmas Eve, trying to take in every concert, event, celebration, and expecting to bake a lot more than I'm actually able to do.  These are just a few of the things that can suck those feelings of joy and love right out of me, leaving me feeling grinchy and worn out.

This year, though, I stumbled across a page on Facebook called "The Merry Little Christmas Project".  This woman was just like me--loves the season, abhors the stress--and gathered together a community of people who want to do it better.  After reading a few posts, I decided to make my own lists of what I wanted more of this year, and what I wanted less of this year.

Here's what I came up with:

For Christmas this year, I want more:

• reading Christmas books
• candlelight
• singing carols & listening to Christmas music
• relaxing
• hot cocoa & mint tea (with cookies, preferably!)
• family time

And I want less:

• perfection
• rushing
• arguing (from the kids)
• noise
• negativity
• pointless stuff

At the end, I reminded myself to "Keep it simple--say 'no' to non-essentials!"

Every day in December, the kids ate the chocolate from their Advent calendars and we enjoyed the Victorian Christmas Advent calendar from Jacquie Lawson (if you haven't seen her e-cards and Advent calendars, you are really missing out!).  I also found a scripture writing plan for myself at Sweet Blessings that lasts the entire month of December, and it has been a wonderfully uplifting part of this month.

So how did I do?  I think I did amazingly well!  I asked my husband for help wrapping gifts early (he loves to wrap presents and does a beautiful job at it), made my Christmas cookies from mixes (yes, I did!), and pretty much hit every bullet point on my list of "more".  There was still a touch of the stuff from the list of "less", but I didn't strive for "none"--I just wanted less, and I really feel like I achieved that.

And December even included one of my girls' birthdays as well as my wedding anniversary.

What I've noticed is different this year is that in years past, I would be running pedal-to-the-metal toward "THE BIG DAY" and then skid in sideways and be ready to put it all away as soon as the sun rose on the 26th, almost a relief that it's over for another 364 days.

This year, though, now that Christmas is over and New Year's is just around the corner, I'm not quite ready to take down the tree, put away the Christmas CDs, and stop eating the cookies (I hope those never end!).  I want to savor it all a little longer.  I actually like that the gift wrap and tissue paper and non-stop deliveries from Amazon are over and I can simply enjoy the lights and decorations and music without even a hint of a deadline looming over me.  (There was even brief talk between the girls and I yesterday about leaving the tree up all year!  I don't think I'm ready for that, partially because I don't like to dust.)

And so, in the end, I guess my takeaway from this year is that I think I had the holiday season I wanted because I planned for it.  I knew what I was after, and I knew it was on me to make it happen.  Yes, there was some rushing around.  Yes, there was some stress.  But all in all, I'm happier and more laid back, and I really want to keep this up for all of 2016.