Christmas is such a magical time of year.
Snow falls and it makes everything bright – IF you live where the snow falls.
Christmas lights line the streets creating a beautiful glow and bringing a magical presence.
Gathering with friends and family, homes filled with laughter.
Activities like drinking hot chocolate, sledding, skating, building snowmen/snowladies, creating gingerbread houses, playing games, watching movies, eating good food… the list goes on.
While all of the above is a picture-perfect Christmas, a Hallmark Christmas.
There is also Christmas reality.
Christmas Reality
Parts of the above may be a typical Christmas for us.
But then there is also real life…
Christmas is a challenging time of year.
A time when we miss people who’ve gone too soon.
A time when we may not know that people we love are struggling.
One may be surrounded by loved ones and still feel all alone or misunderstood.
A family that’s struggling to put food on the table or a gift under the tree.
Perhaps spending Christmas in the hospital, or finding out you have little time left.
Christmas time doesn’t mean that real life stops, it keeps going.
So often in this life, it’s the missed expectations that get us down or derail us.
This is why we need to be creating Christmas year by year.
Creating Christmas
Every year we’re in a different place in our life.
Every year presents new challenges and joys.
Traditions are awesome, but sometimes too much hype and expectations can come from them.
Create the Christmas that is right for you, where you are, and whatever season of life you’re in.
If your season is usually spent trying to meet the expectations of others, let that go.
Create Christmas for you and yours, and not for them.
Let go of the things that bring stress over the holidays.
Perhaps approach it in a different way, a way that may not be the picture-perfect Hallmark Holiday.
Create Christmas where you work less and play more.
Consumerism Christmas
Keeping in mind that creating Christmas is about less and not more. Simplifying it.
Our kids don’t need gifts on gifts – a little goes a long way.
A few toys versus a pile per kid.
If you’re one that is fortunate enough to gift your kids piles of presents consider giving your children less. Perhaps find a charity or organization with kids in need and gift them the other half of your kid’s pile.
Gifting piles of presents creates a consumerism mindset early in life.
How can we show our children that life is about more, more than the stuff that we have?
There is the consumerism of stuff, like above.
However, there is also being consumed by things that own us. Like, Cell Phones.
We gather together, yet are distracted by a world inside of a phone vs. the world we are currently present in. Meanwhile, the phone gives off this false reality of we can be everywhere but where we are because our phone will take us there.
Come back to reality, come back to being present.
We are consumed by having that picture-perfect house, the McCallister house from home alone.
The Pinterest perfect house, the Instagram perfect house, Insert any house, that’s not our own.
Don’t try to make your house those houses, make the house that brings you and yours joy.
We are consumed with work – especially here in the states. If we aren’t working at our physical jobs. We busy ourselves with anything to stay that way. Housework, Cooking, Baking, Fixing. Filling our days.
However, the more we put into our lives the more the feeling of being consumed takes over.
This in turn sets into anxiety, depression, and feelings of inadequacy as we don’t match up to expectations of what life should look like, what seasons of our life should look like, and what Holidays should be.
Creating Christmas
Get rid of Consumerism, let go of what should be, what looks right, sounds right.
Start Creating a life, a season, a holiday that feels right for where you are in the moment you’re in.
Christmas is upon us with Christmas Eve beginning tomorrow.
Take a look at your Christmas season, and take stock of how it’s made you feel.
If that feeling is joyous keep doing what you’re doing!
If this season has brought a level of stress to your life, consider what brought stress and how you could bring a change for the following year.
For me, this year, it’s making cookies – and I only made one batch ya’ll – it still stressed me out.
I also created ornaments for each teacher this Christmas with a gift left to me by a friend who passed this year. That even though it probably made just as much of a mess to clean up as the cookies did.
That brought me joy, wrapping presents while watching Christmas movies -Joy!
Dressing the kids in Christmas outfits is stressful, and outfits cost money. This year our kids can wear what they want to wear who cares if the photo that gets snapped of them is picture-perfect? They’re more apt to smile wearing what they want than what is forced upon them. These are just a few small things I’ve noted from my own personal Christmas experience.
Create Christmas, don’t let Christmas create you.
Find a sense of peace in letting go of the perfection of it all.