It’s never too early to plan for a simpler holiday season.
Let’s rewind the clock for a bit and think about how we felt last January. Were you feeling:
- burnt out. You did too much and didn’t get enough rest during what was supposed to be a break. You had that “I need a vacation after my vacation” feeling.
- overwhelmed. You returned to work/school/routine and felt the weight of putting your home in order, taking down decorations and managing the influx of new gifts. It was a struggle to return to normal days with set bed times and three meals a day.
- stressed out financially. You splurged or overspent and the bills hit in January leaving you anxious and regretful.
- sad. Your holiday season was not what you hoped it would be and we were left wondering why.
This is a great time to unpack last year and identify what didn’t work.
Don’t judge yourself for last years failures or mistakes. Simply identify what you would like to do differently this year.
From that, you can make a holiday plan that will leave you happier and less stressed out in January. Oh, and will help you enjoy the season even more!
Make a gift giving plan.
This is quite simple. Make a list of everyone you give gifts to and how much you spend on each gift. Often we forget just how many people we give gifts to.
Too many people and too much money? Cut your list.
No idea what to get people? Maybe that means you shouldn’t be giving gifts.
If you don’t know the person well enough, or they have everything they need and want, maybe you don’t need to give them something wrapped up.
Maybe it’s time to rethink giving tokens of friendship and thanks and, instead, move to a different type of giving. A long phone call, a walk together, a shared meal, finally catching up for a coffee and a chat: these are simple but meaningful gifts that really show how much you care.
Ditch the frantic last minute gifts from the drugstore or gift cards. Give our time, your ear, you attention. It’s priceless and unique and something only you can give.
Have conversations now about expectations for gift giving this year.
If you have a long tradition of gift exchanges and/or kids with expectations, set the stage now for what gifts will look like this year.
You can change what gift giving looks like and what it costs.
You can reset expectations in your family.
The holiday season can be joyous, beautiful, restful and about connection, friendship, family and giving. It doesn’t have to be about stuff.
Here are some ideas for changing how you give gifts:
- Transition from one to one gifts to a “Secret Santa” exchange. It could be between your siblings or a group of friends. Pull names from a hat and buy gifts for one person instead of seven.
- Give the gift of time. Instead of exchanging gifts, do an activity together. A potluck dinner, an afternoon snow shoeing, volunteering at a soup kitchen.
- Buy for people that really need things. There are many organizations that organize Christmas hampers or wish lists for people struggling in your community. Instead of buying stuff for each other, ask if friends and family want to donate money to a great cause.
- Use the four gift rule for your kids. If Christmas has turned into a long morning of opening presents, decide to cut back. Something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read. Does that seem like a lot? Great! Cut it down even more.
- Have candid conversations with your older kids about finances, what the holidays mean to you and resetting gift expectations. If they are used to getting everything they ask for this will be a new concept.
Build white space into your holiday season.
Did the holidays leave you exhausted last year?
You can change that.
Here are ideas for creating calm and space during this busy time of year:
- Book a day of doing nothing into your schedule. Not a day of baking or decorating or shopping or going to a holiday event. A day of rest. Sleep. Nourishing food. Time outdoors. Nothing on your agenda except feeling good.
- Say no. You don’t have to attend every holiday event, fair or party. Say no when you want to and when you need to.
- Pick just your favourites. Make one kind of holiday cookie instead of six varieties. Skip the Christmas train and just go to a lights festival. Put up half of your decorations.
- Decide when you will be done with holiday shopping. Set the date now. This is incredibly helpful for those of you that are always getting one last thing. Preferably this date is a few weeks out from Christmas so you can spend that time relaxing and spending time with family and friends.
- Slow down. You know what helps me slow down? A puzzle. I had a Christmas puzzle on our coffee table for a few weeks last year that I worked on in fits and spurts. It really helped me slow down and enjoy that special time of year. Find your own way to slow down be it simple dinners of fruit, crackers and cheese, cancelling plans when needed, or going to bed really early.
Give memories and moments instead of stuff.
Want to give your kids a memorable Christmas? Think presence instead of presents.
These memories don’t have to be expensive holidays or laborious outings or handcrafted elaborate homemade advent calendars. Maybe it’s reading a chapter book at breakfast for the month of December. Or spending a full Saturday in pyjamas. Or sledding at the local hill a few times or sleeping over in mom and dad’s room.
Want to show your family and friends you really care about them? Spend time with them. Make time for them. Finally set a time to catch up over a glass of wine or make a date to do something fun together. Resist the temptation to show you care by hurriedly grabbing something from those easy holiday gift displays.
Finally, how do you make the holiday season simple and enjoyable?
More about creating a simple holiday season:
5 Ways to Quell Gift Frenzy in Kids
We had our most minimal holiday yet this past Christmas. We transitioned to a nomadic lifestyle and are traveling full-time in an RV. The extremely limited space put a hard limit on how much stuff we could buy. We did manage to squeeze in a small Christmas tree decorated with souvenir ornaments from he places we’ve visited. Overall though, this holiday season was much less stressful due to the minimal decorations and purchasing fewer gifts.
Great to hear from you! I’ll have to hit up your blog for all the updates on this transition to an RV lifestyle. Loved all your posts around transitioning from a house to an apartment.
I used to dread the holidays but now I enjoy them. Last year money was very tight due to my husband losing a lot of freelance work so I convinced my family to give up exchanging gifts and just do small stocking stuffers instead. It’s just four of us that get together and we are all full-grown adults now. Most of the stuff we put in the stockings are consumables like a few pieces of really good chocolate or small packs of nuts and dried fruit, maybe a lip balm or purse size lotion. We get together on Christmas day to enjoy a simple homemade dinner, open our stocking stuffers, and watch our favorite version of A Christmas Carol. My husband and I attend only one or two parties each season and we always spend New Year’s Eve at home, just the two of us. I go to bed early that night and wake before sunrise to meditate New Year’s Day. We spend the day reading or watching movies.
It’s definitely good to start with a plan! Like you said, then you have an idea of what you’re aiming for and if you need to cut off some people from the list because it’s just too much. No plan is perfect, but you’re probably better off with something than nothing.
Great post! I would like to add that if your children are young, I would encourage you to lower their expectations for presents now. You can do it at any age, but it’s much easier when they’re younger. I have heard the suggestion of “the four gift rule” before, but don’t feel bound to that. If you are reading this and you are low on finances, don’t feel badly because you can’t afford four gifts per child (or you just don’t want to get four gifts per child) and it seems that is the minimum other people are doing. (FYI in our house, we give our kids one gift, and they buy one gift for each other. So each child opens two gifts.) This is just a value in our house, to not get excessive, and we give our kids experiences all year long. They aren’t lacking for anything! My other suggestion is for people who you don’t know what to get, give them baking. My house is moving more and more to giving baking (both sweet and savour). Most of us have everything we need, we don’t need to get excessive. Baking can be less expensive but the effort shows you care. And in our busy world (particularly at Christmas), there is less and less home cooked food around, so it’s always appreciated.
I love receiving homemade baking!
And ditto on the setting modest expectations when the kids are young. It’s really helpful down the road when they actually have things they want to put on a list. They aren’t asking for big ticket items or loads of stuff because that’s not what Santa brings or parents give.
Great ideas, thanks