Reducing Holiday Stress

Though festive and beautiful, the holidays can be an amazing source of anxiety. With Christmas cards to write and send, presents to wrap, outdoor lights to put up, traveling to plan, food to buy and a checkbook to balance, we can easily hit January with more relief than good memories.

But the holidays don’t need to be that way. With a little planning, you can cope with the mayhem without pulling your hair out.

* Lists

Before you begin, make several lists. Where are you going this holiday and who do you plan to visit or host? What meals are you serving? What food will you be bringing with you when you visit others? Who do you send Christmas cards to? Who do you exchange gifts with? What needs to be done, cleaned or finished before the holidays arrive?

These lists may seem a little overwhelming once you have them on paper to stare at, but they will allow you to see the big picture clearly. Break the lists down into more manageable chunks, then focus and prioritize.

* Simplify

Plan food that can be made and frozen ahead of time. Buy family gifts, instead of small individual gifts for each member. Wrap your gifts right away, and sort them into piles relating to families, trips or days. (We have always had a pile for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, each divided into family groups). Choose simple, non stress gift ideas that can be made or bought ahead of time. Limit perishables to those who haven’t the room or the need for other gifts. One year we made jars of cookies for everyone on our list. Though we made and froze the cookies ahead of time, we couldn’t actually prepare and wrap them until just before Christmas Eve, adding unnecessary stress at an already busy time.

* Try to be realistic

Things won’t just fall perfectly into place. They never do. The best that we can hope for is to try and foresee the inevitable. We decorated two Christmas trees this year. The one in our living room upstairs has all of the breakable and special ornaments on it. The one downstairs, an older Christmas tree, has the shimmery garlands, the wild multi-coloured lights, and the less fragile tree ornaments. I had hoped that both trees would stand beautiful and proud, and preferably untouched, throughout the holidays, but it wasn’t to be. The morning after the trees went up, the basement tree went down. As I scampered downstairs to find out what the unfamiliar sound was, I discovered two toddlers, pleased as punch with themselves, riding their ride-on toys over the length of the downed tree. My husband later reassembled the sorry sight and we had a discussion with the culprits, but I have to be thankful that I had the good sense to put the less fragile Christmas decorations up in their play area. Having a beautifully decorated house is a lovely idea, but if your children or pets are going to make it impossible, safe yourself the stress and try your creative ideas another year or in a better location.

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