Christmas Survival Strategy

I have an infallible strategy for surviving Christmas. Since I have lots of kids, and lots of extended family, and a business, Christmas survival is very important. If I tried to do it all, I’d crumple into the corner in a sobbing heap and not get back up! So here is my three part strategy:

1. Procrastinate as long as possible on gift buying. This frees me from worry until at least a week before Christmas!

2. I don’t. I don’t decorate, I don’t bake, I don’t dress in cute Christmassy Clothes, I don’t worry about being festive. I just try to be kind, try to get through what is most important each day, and don’t worry about what anyone else might think. My kids decorate the tree and cut out paper snowflakes, and do other festive stuff. I let them and feel grateful that I don’t have to fuss with it. I do sing carols, we sing in a production of the Messiah, and we have Christmas traditions. I just don’t overload myself with it.

3. I’m cheap. I don’t overload the credit cards or spend excessive amounts. $20 is the limit that we spend on ANYBODY at Christmas, unless we do something special for the family. Usually my limits are even lower than that. If I tried to do something extravagant for everyone on our list, I’d spend more than we earn in a month. So frugal is the order of the day. We do try to select things that are useful, appropriate, and that are selected for the individual in question.

Yes, I suppose I am sort of extreme about some of these things, but the alternative is getting out of my depth, getting warped every Christmas, and feeling overwhelmed. I refuse to do that, because frankly, all those things just AREN’T really important! Caring for my family, meeting the needs of our clients so our family can eat, and making sure that my marriage is strong are the priorities. When anything else cuts into those, out it goes! There just isn’t room in my life for all the trivialities.

Who is it that decides that you have to have your house decked out to the point of frenzy, the freezer full of hand-baked goods, and the tree loaded with thousands of dollars of gifts anyway? I’ll tell you who:

Sellers

They don’t want you to do this to make you happy. They want you to do this to BUY THINGS. Decorations, gifts, ingredients. They don’t care if you are benefited by it or not.

You can have a perfectly happy Christmas with a few strands of decorations that your kids made, some gifts that you purchased from love instead of a desire to impress, and with a few carefully chosen items that you made just because they were the ones you thought were most important.

The key to it is to determine not which things are VISIBLE, but which things have the most MEANING. Keep them. Let the rest go.