The holidays can be such a wonderful, joyous, cinnamony, delicious time. You get all kinds of mail that isn’t bills and everybody is constantly trying to push cookies and alcohol on you. There should be no reason not to love this season. But, sometimes, the season bites back. You find yourself overwhelmed by all you have to do to celebrate. That really sucks. I’ve been thinking about this issue for a long time (proof can be found here, here, and here) and I think I’ve pretty much figured out the top reasons the season turns to crap. So, here are my top seven spirit dampeners and how to avoid letting them suck the spirit out of you. 1. This holiday is expensive, yo!First of all, if your giftee determines how much you love him/her by how much you spend, you need to find someone new to bequeath your love upon. Quickly. You know what really shows someone how much you care for them? How you treat them the rest of the year. And vice versa. Gifts are a way to hand someone a scaled down physical representation of your bigger feelings. Just as the word ‘tree’, or even a picture of it, doesn’t really capture the real thing, so is your gift meant to be a symbol that you care; it isn’t meant to match up leaf for leaf (or dollar for dollar). 2. But my kids would be so disappointed if there aren’t a zillion presents under the tree!There is nothing in this world as dazzling to the eyes as a Christmas tree enveloped by a wall of presents. Well, except for all of nature. Seriously, though, I get it. You want to create a BAM! factor Christmas morning for your kids. Lots of presents under the tree feels like magic. Who doesn’t want to give their kids magic? Bad parents. That’s who. But, after the Christmas carnage is over, how many of those presents are either trash or shoved into the back of the closet within a month? What you’ve created is a future trip to Goodwill for yourself. Chances are, there a couple of things your kids really want and everything else is just noise. You can teach some pretty good lessons about consumerism and respecting resources by turning down that noise. If your kids are upset, just explain to them that Santa was watching and he was disappointed in their behavior all year... especially their ungratefulness. 3. I can’t find the perfect gift! You want your giftee to be blown away by how completely thoughtful, insightful and downright brilliant your gift for them is. Something that says, “not only does she obviously love me, but she’s got mad gift giving skills because this gift is perfect.” Don’t be ashamed, it’s not a bad legacy to want to have. Here’s the thing ONCE AGAIN: who it’s from is more important than what it is. Regardless, the best way to deal with this issue is to give handmade. This sounds self-serving, but, as someone who not only makes gifts, but who goes to craft shows and Etsy shops to buy things handmade by other people’s hands, I’m here to tell you, the more human involvement in an item, the better it is. Humans don’t like to feel like cogs in a machine, we like to feel like unique snowflakes. The best way to show someone how much you appreciate them as a unique snowflake is to give them something handmade. (Your hands: optional.) 4. I'm out of time!We all know those jerks that brag in, like, August, that they’ve finished their Christmas shopping and then smugly sit back and laugh at all of us who are flailing around like headless (organic, free range) chickens. Here’s the thing: you are not going to find the perfect, handmade, soul-feeding gift on Christmas eve. Rushing to the mall and panic shopping is not the answer. If time is up and you aren’t finished, let it go. Either shorten your list of giftees or get gift cards and move on with your holiday. If you are a helpful, loving, fantastic person the rest of the year, a gift card is more of the same from such a generous person. If you are a horrible person, save your money, nothing you give matters. “But, Heather, I can’t give my mother (sister, wife, girlfriend) a gift card.” Really? She wouldn’t love a bouquet of gift cards from her favorite places to eat and shop? Do it, and if it doesn’t work, well, there’s no pleasing that woman so just give up trying. 5. I’ve baked 80 batches of cookies, sewn 15 quilts, knitted 24 pairs of socks and hot glue gunned 40 ornaments and I bet those ungrateful bastards (aka loved ones) won’t even appreciate all the effort I’ve put into this! Yeah, this would be the downside of a handmade Christmas (when using your own hands). If time isn’t plentiful, bitterness can sink in. If you find yourself holding the gifts you’ve chosen to make/buy against the person you're giving to, well... I’m not judging, but, you’re doing Christmas wrong. Gifts are a token of love, not a demonstration of wealth or your culinary/crafting skills. Along with this, if you’ve ever had the thought, “Well, I spent way more on her than she did on me...” RED FLAG! Step back and re-evaluate. You might be a crappy person. The point is, you don’t have to do it. Any of it. You can decide RIGHT NOW to be a gift card person. Or even a person that only does gifts for her immediate family, or not at all. Done. You’re welcome. I have a certain close friend who happens to make the most delicious caramels that I have ever placed on my tongue. I look forward to them every year and brag to all of my other friends that I have perfect caramels in my life and their lives pale in comparison for not having the experience of such culinary magic. That said, if my good friend ever decides she’s done, (*please don’t be this year*, *please don’t be this year*) my holiday won’t be ruined and I won’t think less of her for not spending hours upon hours of her holiday season in the kitchen. If I did, I wouldn’t be the kind of friend that’s worthy of perfect caramels. 6. These stupid Christmas cards are an expensive hassle! Personally, I love Christmas cards. I go all out. SilverPixels takes gorgeous pictures of my kids and designs beautiful cards for me. I get to pick my quote and everything. My cards are a treat for myself as well as a little gift to the people I send them to. ('Cause who doesn’t want a picture of my kids? Hello?) But, if cards are nothing but a chore for you, bail. Don’t do it. Throw up a Facebook post and call it a day. If it doesn’t add joy, what’s the point? You are not going to make or break anyone’s holiday by sending or not sending a card and it might just save yours to not do it. 7. I need to make traditions for my kids like I had or there will be no magic at all! I’m guilty of sitting down when my kids were still babies and making a list of all of the things I should do each Christmas to create traditions for them. Things like: a handmade ornament with their name on it every year, an advent calendar with little toys instead of candy, baking cookies for Santa, making cards to send, stringing popcorn, etc. You know what most of these things have in common? They require effort on my part. And while each thing seems small, add them together, then add that effort with all the shopping and holiday parties and regular old household chores that still need to get done, and it starts to feel like a whole lot of work. Christmas spirit fading... I do the advent calendar. I buy store bought candy (Little gifts? Yeah, right.) and sometimes I forget to fill the drawer before I go to bed. (I filled all the drawers at the beginning of December once... ONCE.) If we don’t get around to making cookies for Santa, we buy them or use cookies given to us by someone else. He’s indiscriminate. I tried stringing popcorn once and I kept stabbing my thumb with the needle I was using. It was painful and the popcorn was bloody. I gave up. It turns out, the best tradition is the one where you are cheerful and relaxed for the Christmas season. If, in an effort to make Christmas perfect for everyone else it is ruined for you, well, that’s a crappy tradition, and it’s one you certainly don’t want to pass on to your kids. Will following these steps save Christmas for you? I don't know, but it worked for me. I could be frantically trying to get a kiln load together so I can make more gifts right now. I'm not. I've told my people I'm out of pottery and I'll try to hit them up for their birthdays. I don't think I've ruined anyone's Christmas but I'm sure I've saved mine.
Just like oxygen on an airplane, you need to put on your own Christmas cheer before you can help those around you with theirs. Merry Christmas, you guys, and thanks for reading. Your attention is a lovely gift. **Picture of calm chicken is a pastel drawing my mother did for me for my birthday. Because she gets it. Close to my house is a forest, a state forest that I’ve claimed as my own. I’m willing to share it with people, but I prefer that they enjoy my forest while I’m not there. I’m not antisocial, I just specifically go there to be alone. Plus, other people on the trail tend to make me feel like I’m about to be murdered... or forced into unsolicited small talk. It’s kind of terrifying. Especially the ninja runners. How you can run and make no noise is beyond me, but I can't tell you how many times the first sound of a runner I've heard is the heavy breathing, like, a foot from my head. I jump and yell like I'm in a horror movie and it's awkward for both of us. Then I feel guilty for not running. Then I remind myself that I could be sitting on my couch. Then I want to catch the ninja and be like, “I might just be walking, but at least I’m doing something.” Then I remember that the ninja doesn’t care about me, probably doesn’t want to see me in the woods either, and it doesn’t matter anyway because there is no way I can catch running ninjas. So yeah, I’d prefer to be alone in my forest. That said, there is a person or some persons that I’m really glad share my forest. The person(s) that do this: My Mother-in-law taught me that a man-made stack of rocks is called a cairn. Typically they are used to mark something (like a trail) but sometimes they’re just there. I saw the one below more than 100 miles from my house at a place where I’ve been vacationing with my family since I was a wee lass. (The origin of cairn is Scottish, so, you should probably read this whole post with a Scottish accent. You know, for authenticity.) Turns out, people really like to stack rocks. There is one particular spot in my forest where the cairns appear: on a boulder, next to the creek. Whenever I turn the corner, approaching the cairn boulder, I’m always excited to see one there and I’m a little disappointed when I don’t. When I first started coming to my forest, many moons ago, the cairns were just stacks. Now, they tend to look like short chubby people -- cairns in my image, if you will. One day last December, I turned the corner and saw the whole area covered with them. It was a cairn party! I did a happy dance. For rocks. Why does the person(s) in my forest do this? I don’t know. I don’t care. And I hope I never turn the corner and actually see someone doing it (luckily, I’m not ninja-like at all, so they have time to escape). The point is, someone stops along their walk/ninja run and leaves something behind for strangers to enjoy. That, my friends, is awesome. And, I must say, anonymous awesome is the very best kind. I like attention and money as much as the next person, but when motivation is tied with recognition, awesomeness gets diluted. I offer my sincerest gratitude to the cairn maker(s) and everyone out there with an impetus to be quietly awesome. Seriously, thank you. I love the idea of vacations. Who doesn't, right? You go somewhere, you relax, you see cool stuff... Only problem is, I'm not very good at them. I often get all stressed out when I go on vacation. So, I’ve been paying attention lately, trying to crack the code on how to enjoy something that everyone else seems to do naturally. Best I came up with are the five ways I tend to mess them up. I... 1. Forget sunscreen on the first day (or any day). This no duh slip has caused more painful beach showers than I care to recollect. Plus, how stupid can I get? Not only is there A SONG, but, I have a good friend who survived skin cancer AND I often vacation with my sister who is a sunscreen Nazi. She brings enough sunscreen on any given vacation to keep the entire block pale for at least a week.
I used to think people who chose to live in a city were crazy. Not: haha, you’re so crazy, pass the margaritas and chicken wings; more: holy heck, you. are. crazy, pass the straight jackets and Haldol. Why would anyone want to live all crammed together, surrounded by noise and concrete, when you can live all spread out and surrounded by trees?
When my daughter was born, she couldn’t breathe. Time went by and that precious sound of newborn crying just didn’t come. There I was, in that precarious, exposed childbirth position, helpless. I saw my midwife’s worried face as she said, “call it” to my nurse. And almost instantly, I watched my room flood with people, running in to code my new baby. As they worked on her, I looked over at my husband and asked in desperation, “will she be okay?” and the man, who, to this day does not realize there are times I WANT TO BE LIED TO, said, “I don’t know.” I laid there while a team of strangers tried to save my girl, who I had yet to see, and I wondered whether I was going to leave that hospital a mother... or not. Finally, I heard her, and the man in charge of her resuscitation said, “she’s going to be okay, mom.” And that was it. My title was official. Abby spent most of her first day in the NICU for observation; where I was repeatedly told by the staff that she was the fattest baby in there. (Who you callin’ fat?) When I got her back that night, I spent hours staring at her and thinking of all the things I would do to protect her. I thought how I would jump in front of a train for her, because, that comes up so often. Of course, parenting is not a single act of valor. It is much harder than that. It is years of relentless effort and worrying and feeling fairly certain you are doing it all wrong -- interspersed with rare moments of sheer bliss where you are pretty sure you must be doing something right. When I was young(er) and foolish(er), I’d look back on my childhood and question my mother’s decisions. I have no doubt my own children will question mine. But, I’m willing to bet that once they are old enough to realize life is not a series of obvious, logical choices, but rather a bunch of shoulder shrugging, ‘let’s try that and see what happens’ moments, they, like me, will look at their mom and say, “thanks for doing your best.” (And if they don’t, hell with them... ungrateful little degenerates.) I’ve been a mother for nine years now; not seasoned, but no longer a rookie. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder if I’m doing the right thing for my kids. I’ve met many women who feel the same way. The advice I offer all mothers out there, struggling to keep it together, is the very first advice I gave my own child: just breathe. Hang in there, moms, and... (Abby gave me this card this morning... while I was using the bathroom. And so it goes.)
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