Every year when it feels like it should be back to school, pumpkin spice latte time, I start noticing Christmas trees popping up at the store. Before September is even over, there are entire aisles dedicated to Christmas decorations. My kids take notice and pretty soon I have Christmas wish lists a mile long. Then comes the pressure to start on our traditions that are supposed to be fun, but end up just adding more to my plate. Things like sending Christmas cards, baking cookies, making gingerbread men, finding matching family pajamas…I could go on and on.
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Christmas is supposed to be magical, but somewhere along the way, the magic started to feel more like a burden that I struggled to enjoy.
If you’re a mom, especially a mom with little kids, you know the internal pressure of making this season as special as possible for them. Of course we want to create beautiful memories, but with the invention of Pinterest and social media, we find new things to add to our to-do lists that past generations didn’t have to deal with.
Looking directly at you Elf on the Shelf.
Today let’s talk about how we can reclaim the joy and wonder of the Christmas season while letting all (okay, maybe just most) of that mom guilt go…because it really is possible to reclaim the magic of Christmas without losing ourselves in the process!
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How to Bring Real Christmas Magic
Reclaim an Old-Fashioned Christmas
One way is to make Christmas for our kids look a lot more like our Christmases did as kids.
We didn’t have matching pajamas, matching stockings, or brand-new Christmas decorations that Hobby Lobby bullied us into buying.
We had ornaments that our parents had collected over the years, no Elf on the Shelf, and had no clue what our friends’ Christmas decorations looked like unless we visited.
There wasn’t social media with perfectly staged pictures with a glamorous filter to make us feel like we weren’t doing enough.
These days, the guilt creeps in fast.
The stupid gingerbread house won’t stick together with that way-too-sweet white icing, we couldn’t get it together in time to make it to the local Christmas parade, and the time slots are booking up fast to sit on Santa’s lap at the mall.
What if we let all of that go and just enjoyed a simple, homemade Christmas without worrying what social media would think? Because…
What Our Kids Remember Isn’t What We Think
If you think back to your childhood Christmases, do you remember what kind of wrapping paper your mom used?
How clean the house was?
Whether the cookies were homemade or store-bought?
Probably not.
You just remember how you felt. How exciting the season was and the feeling of hearing Christmas music playing at the mall.
That is the magic of Christmas.
Our kids aren’t going to remember how perfectly decorated our house was, but they will probably remember if their mom was too stressed and exhausted to enjoy it all with them.
This year I encourage you to:
Let Go of the Pressure: You Can’t Do It All (And You Don’t Need To!)
You do not need to do it all.
Trying to do everything to make your kids’ Christmas magical will only lead to burnout and will end up having the opposite effect.
Your kids can sense how overwhelmed you are when you’re short-tempered and trying to force a smile.
This year, it’s time to choose joy over the pressure.
Let’s be super intentional about what we give our time to this holiday season.
Pick the traditions you want your kids to remember, maybe only three or so, and dedicate yourself to making sure those happen.
In our house, that looks like:
- Going to see Christmas lights. Even a drive around a nice, local neighborhood. Pack cookies for the drive and just deal with the crumbs later.
- Drinking hot chocolate while watching a Christmas movie. We do this more than once throughout the season and our kids love it.
- Bake cookies for Santa. We often do this days ahead of Christmas and just freeze a plate of cookies to put out on Christmas Eve.
What to Do When The Guilt Kicks In
The first year that you take a break from all of the stress and start to reclaim your holidays, the guilt is bound to creep back in.
You’ll be so surprised by how different this year feels, that you’ll assume you must be missing something.
Maybe you can take on more, maybe you’re not doing enough.
When those thoughts creep in, you have to immediately remind yourself that while the holidays are about making lasting memories with your kids, YOU matter too.
These are your Christmases with your kids and, as heartbreaking as it is to realize, we only get so many.
There are very few Christmases where we are the center of their day, where Santa still delivers gifts, and the magic of the season is so thick you can literally feel it.
Don’t you dare let the guilt of not meeting some imaginary standard steal these fleeting moments from you.
What if the Kids Notice?
My best parenting advice is to be honest with your kids about almost everything.
There is still something to be said for protecting your kids from things when they are too big for them to understand.
However…
Learning to draw boundaries is one of the best gifts you can teach your kids.
Explain to them that while you have loved all of the holidays you’ve shared together, that it sometimes feels like we are bouncing from one event to the next and aren’t fully enjoying any one activity.
Tell them that this year is going to be even MORE magical because we’re going to spend less time in the car this season and more time drinking hot chocolate and watching movies.
I bet your kids are as excited about this change as mine were.
Invite them to help plan a magical Christmas season by asking them what their favorite Christmas activity / tradition / event is.
Do your best to incorporate those things while cutting out every single bit of the extras that you can. Including the Christmas cards if those stress you out. Those things take too much time and money to put together!
This is how you cultivate a holiday season filled with joy, love, and Christmas spirit.
What I Want You To Know:
I know you want to create an amazing holiday season for your kids, so believe me when I tell you that by doing less, you are actually doing just that. If you take nothing else away from my words today, let it be the permission to slow down, to be more intentional with your time, and to soak up every moment with your family that you can this Christmas. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone. Let this year be the start of a beautiful new tradition of enjoying the ones you love while you’ve got them. They will never be this little at Christmas again.
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