Holiday Tips and Tricks

October officially signals the start of “holiday season” in the Darr household. We love every single part of the last three months of the year. We also are a family who starts everything “early”: Fall decorations go up in September, Christmas decor comes out fairly quickly after Halloween. We have already written Christmas wish lists and begun ordering books for Christmas school. I totally respect those who want to wait, but for my family we can enjoy the actual holidays a lot better if we have all of the housekeeping things done before we get to them. That being said, I’ve found that there’s a few things that help the holidays to go more smoothly in our house:

1. We don’t do everything, but we do do the IMPORTANT things. I’m the kind of person who loves and wants to do every. Single. Activity for every. Single. Holiday. That is obviously unrealistic and a recipe for disaster. I also know I have a tendency to emphasize things that aren’t actually that important for my family. Case in point: when our oldest two were around two and three, I saw the cute Christmas picture book countdown that was all the rage on Pinterest. I then wrapped up 25 Christmas picture books, each with a cute bow on top, and stuck them under the tree. Guess what my two-year-old did when she walked in and saw them? Took every single bow off. Was it worth the effort to wrap all those books? Obviously not. Shockingly enough, I’ve found that my family can still enjoy reading Christmas books together each year even if they aren’t wrapped in pretty paper. So how do we know what things actually matter to our family? We ask them, of course. Usually around the beginning of November, I have each person pick an activity they want to do at Christmas, a movie to watch, and a recipe they want to make. This doesn’t mean we won’t do anything else during December, but those six activities that get picked are the ones that get protected and scheduled first. 

2. Do what works for your family and don’t compare it to anyone else. Don’t forget when you’re asking your family what they want to do, to voice your wants, too. It’s okay if a family picture in matching pjs is really important to you but no one else in your family cares about it; you can still spend time and effort on it because it’s important to you. Speaking of family pjs– for years the trend was to have everybody matching. But last year I noticed a lot of “influencers” bashing those who spend money on matching pjs. Can we just take a minute to acknowledge that neither option is right or wrong? If you’re a mom/family who loves the matching pjs (and you can afford it in your budget), then do it! If you're a mom who hates spending money on the pjs and it’s not important to anyone in your household, then skip it! Our Christmas doesn’t have to (and really shouldn’t) look the same as anyone else’s.

3. Let traditions happen organically. When my kids were all still little, I sometimes felt I needed to force traditions to happen, like I was responsible for making perfect holidays and if I failed at that job I was going to ruin my kids and send them to a counselor’s couch as an adult. A little dramatic, right? Yet how many of us moms approach the holiday season this way? The ironic thing is that I can now attest to the fact that my family’s favorite traditions are the ones that were born out of less than perfect circumstances. Like the year we moved to Montana: we were all so sad to not see family at the holidays, so we decided to take our oldest two to see the Nutcracker as a special treat. This turned into a yearly event, and now we are getting ready to take our five-year-old for the first time. Traditions don’t have to be big and splashy either. We watch a Christmas movie every single Friday night in December. A lot of those Friday nights look like ordering pizza because homemade pizza just isn’t in the books during a busy holiday month. But it’s still special, for the simple reason that it’s time together. 

4. Use the family calendar to your benefit. Our family’s dry erase wall calendar is our most used tool that keeps me sane. I think we have a tendency to look at scheduling with the question “is there blank space on that date?” But the better question is “how much blank space is on our calendar as a whole?” You may be able to cram every single event into the months of November and December, but it's probably going to result in a frazzled, cranky mom (been there, done that). Make sure you’re using your planner and calendar to plan for margin during the holiday months and to make sure everyone is on the same page with scheduling. I will sometimes literally write on the calendar “rest day” in November and December. That’s a cue for myself and my husband to not schedule anything for that day so we can rest and recharge and sometimes just catch up on laundry. Remember point number one: we are focusing on doing the things that are important to our family, and giving ourselves the freedom to say no to the rest.

I hope your family is looking forward to the holidays, too! I know this season can feel heavy so often, yet there is so much joy to be had as we practice gratitude for our many blessings and rejoice in the Savior’s birth. Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!! 😉😉