With Christmas around the corner, you may just be feeling the stress rising. But I have a secret about Christmas, which I will share with you here because it might prevent you from murdering half of your family, going bankrupt, or having a nervous breakdown.
With Christmas around the corner, you may just be feeling the stress rising. But I have a secret about Christmas, which I will share with you here because it might prevent you from murdering half of your family, going bankrupt, or having a nervous breakdown.
It is this: Christmas is just a DAY IN THE YEAR. That is it. You get up, you have a nice roast lunch, you sit around watching rubbish films on telly, you go to bed. The end.
The only difference is a few presents here and there, which should make the day better, not worse, and maybe an extra glass or two of bubbly at lunch, and a catch-up with your Granny. How bad can that be??
The fuss that is made about Christmas is something I find shocking, depressing and grim, in equal measure. It’s just one day, guys!
When our children get whipped up into such a frenzy about it that they can’t sleep for excitement and anticipation, and that’s in the first week of December, we really can’t blame them.
But here are my tips on how to keep things simple, and avoid meltdown.
Keep Christmas short and magical. This makes it a lot easier to enjoy it, and doesn’t feel like it’s dragging out like a life sentence.
Buy one main present for each child, and a few little extras. When I say ‘a few’ I don’t mean thirty five. I mean two or three. That is enough! Really. They will not get scurvy or collapse in a heap just because they don’t get a billion presents they don’t need. Really. It’s fine.
Think of Christmas dinner as a normal Sunday roast, but with a few more potatoes and some stuffing, and crackers. Obviously it will end up as more than this, but if you just think of it as a nice lunch, not a cooking marathon, you can deal with it all a lot better. Just put the oven on in the morning, chuck the turkey in, prepare the veg, go for a walk, come back, drink wine, put veg on, set table – TA DA! Lunch is ready.
Keep the heating on low. Being overheated is to humans are a red rag is to an angry bull. People get along much better when they are not too hot, and there is fresh air in the house.
Don’t drink and eat constantly. Like overheating, overeating and over-drinking is almost guaranteed to make people feel grumpy, irritable and generally bad. So let’s keep the self-stuffing to a minimum, and feel much better.
Give yourselves some space. Lots of space.
And ENJOY it.