@abasket You need to do my wrapping party of one suggestion!
That’s the problem - I AM a wrapping party of one! No amount of spirits - or in my case cookies - will make it better! My youngest will help me some - but I also like her to be “surprised” about what her siblings get. I always tell myself to start early, do a little at a time…
I get super into Christmas, BUT-we do a cruise for the week of Thanksgiving. It really makes Christmas a lot more fun and less stressful when you’ve spent a week sunning your buns in the Caribbean and having people wait on you hand and foot. Mojito ma’am? Why yes, thank you!
We come back with our batteries recharged and excited for Christmas. This was precipitated by MIL being super obnoxious about Thanksgiving several years in a row and my husband eventually said the hell with it, let’s go on a cruise. Best.Decision.Ever and we already have the Thanksgiving 2016 cruise booked. The teens love the no-stress week, as well. The cruise is also our big gift to each other and the kids, so Christmas is mostly smaller fun gifts between each other-less stress there.
I gave up Christmas cards about 5 years ago and have no regrets.
No more stockings starting this year. Kids are young adults and we’ve only ever done stockings for the kids in my family.
I only give gifts to my immediate family and my parents. I do 98% of the shopping online and tend to give fewer, but more expensive gifts and experiences rather than a lot of stuff.
I’ve gotten better at delegating task to the spouse and kids instead of trying to do it all myself. My husband now wraps the gifts and he’s better at it than I am.
I decorate but keep it simple.
I do bake - a lot.
At this time of the year, there’s a chance that the UPS man was hired seasonally, and actually loves you for the work. We usually have 1 or 2 guys delivering, but at this time of the year it seems that the drivers have helpers who actually do the physical delivery while the driver scrounges around for the packages for the next stop.
I stopped cards some years ago. If anyone wants to know how we’re doing, there’s FB and email.
I shop online for almost everything other than groceries, gas, and medicine.
I stopped dealing with trees years ago.
I stopped dealing with presents in any big way after the kids no longer believed in Santa. They’re clever kids, so it wasn’t too many years :)) We truly do give presents year round, when we see something that strikes us.
We have a neighbor who lights up his house brightly enough for everyone in the neighborhood.
To be honest, the only holiday I like anymore is Thanksgiving, even though it has become slightly more commercial lately. There are no Thanksgiving cards I allow myself to see (I hear that they exist, but I avoid the aisle at Walgreens). It’s the holiday with no religious overtones to exclude anyone, it’s all about the 4 F’s: friends, family, food, and (as much as I’m not a fan) football.
I don’t read articles about gifting, baking, or entertaining
I don’t buy presents for people I don’t like
I don’t care if I over-play the Chicago Christmas album
I don’t forget to take everyone to see the lights, and stand in the cold and ring the kettle bell
I don’t feel bad that we don’t entertain
I don’t forget to make peanut blossoms
I don’t cook Christmas day
I don’t take offense if a store wants to say Happy Holidays
I don’t forget that so many people would give anything to see someone again, so I hug my siblings, difficult ILs, fragile parents, and feel blessed, blessed, blessed
I stopped sending cards with the advent of Facebook. No need to send updated photos of the kids each year. I still do one or two to elderly relatives.
I stopped the big tree when the kids went to college. I miss it. But I don’t miss the needle clean up or the challenge of putting it up.
I never did much baking. Too many calories.
I still put up a few lighted decorations and candles. I love the soft lights on winter evenings.
I used to bake lots of cookies and make fudge and candy. It was overwhelming but I sort of miss it. However, I would be the one eating 90% of it, so no. I have had my household decorations in a pile on the living room floor for ELEVEN days. I just cannot get into it this year. I dread the thought of hauling up the huge tree. I think I should, for my college freshman D, but really, she hasn’t cared about the tree or helped decorate it in 18 years
I do love lights, lots of lights. Darkness at 5 pm is very depressing. I really hate taking down lights though…
Funny…we have it backwards from a few of you. Stockings will be done…those are the fun part. We will have very few gifts under our tree. Like one each…maybe two. Nothing big.
Instead of baking loads of sweets I now tend to plan one semi-elaborate desert to take to our neighbors when we get together on Christmas eve. I read cookbooks and online recipes since that’s half the fun. Right now I’m planning on a Thomas Keller Coconut Meringue cake featured in Saveur.
Besides, when I spend a lot of time on one project I tend not to eat it because I am sick to death of it.
We are sporadic. Some years we do outside lights, some years we don’t get to it. When I feel like it I have folks over on Christmas Eve (friends know there may be a last-minute invitation, or not, and I don’t take it hard if they don’t come). My lanai is clean (had fo clean it up for Thanksgiving this year), so I’ll probably invite this year.
I send out New Year’s cards from my firm, and every year there are more to sign and stuff, but now I have staff to help and at least that’s AFTER Christmas. No Christmas cards, though I do love the 3-4 I still get from die-hard friends.
A few years ago we waited too long and there were no live/cut trees available (small island life - you learn not to dawdle if you see something that you want, as it will soon be gone), and no good artificial ones either. So that year we bought some artificial greenery garlands from the bargain bin and strung them up aroundnthenlanai, and hung our ornaments from them. Once we realized that Christmas was just as much fun without a tree, we have been more flexible. Last year we got an artificial tree, something I once swore I’d never do, so that’s one less thing to worry about.
Last year my brother suggested that we stop exchanging gifts between the adults who are geographically distant (basically him and his wife, and the rest of us who are all here). That was a relief, but now that my mom is gone and our family is shrinking, and the kids are older, I kind of miss the big box of wrapped gifts that used to arrive from the mainland a few days before Christmas.
We haven’t done a Christmas dinner in years, just some easy cinnamon/apple rolls that we have for breakfast while opening gifts.
I love wrapping, fot years I had a storage room in the basement that became the “wrapping room” for a few weeks every December. Anyone could go in there and close the door, and we knew to always knock and wait before going in. Now there are fewer gifts, but hubby would tell you that I have more rolls of paper than ever! Its a weakness of mine. But I don’t seem to have the energy I once had to create amazing bows and wrapping designs. Sigh, just getting older, and working too much, I think.
This is about doing what you love and not doing what you think is a chore.
Hey, you like stockings, great! You like wrapping, great! You like baking, fantastic! And if you can’t get excited about these things, that is great too!
I feel sometimes that I should like more of the holidays stuff. That everyone else is making stockings, baking and entertaining like crazy. What this tells me is that people can’t do everything. So do what you want and don’t feel guilty about what you don’t do.
I admit to being jealous of sweetbeat. 3 years ago my h and I went with his brother and his wife to the Cayman Islands in December. How great it was to see a boat parade with Christmas lights. To see the house decorations, and eat on the beach. That was the life.
Here in northern Michigan, we are having unseasonably warm weather. It’s 45 with no snow. I saw people on the golf course.
I don’t celebrate Christmas at all being that I am Jewish but I once worked in a relatively small office in which we were all given an employee list with home addresses and expected to send one another holiday greeting cards which I thought was a bit strange but every office has it’s own traditions and culture. Also every employee was allowed to take an afternoon for holiday shopping and the two employees who headed out the door the first were two older single Jewish women.
I normally host two Christmas / Holiday parties at my home. The first one is for our neighborhood and the second is for our employees. I am not doing either of them this year.
The employees will be disappointed , but I really just want to focus on our own family and not deal with all the work it is for me.
No Christmas cards for me either.
I don’t really feel like decorating much this year . I have put a few things out , reluctantly. I don’t feel like dragging things in from my shed.
I bake every weekend for one of our businesses and even more so during the holidays.
I think I am just wanting to dial things back and not go overboard any more. I think we need to just enjoy our time together , eat , play games, watch movies
I’m in London on vacation right now and for the first time in my life our trees aren’t up yet.
I don’t do cards. I make our big meal Christmas eve, then on Christmas day I do heat up appetizers. I even order a cake from Williams Sonoma we all love. On that day we pretty much stay in jammies, watch movies and play games. I’m a gift giver, I can’t help myself. I’m doing more and more online and I nearly finished shopping before we left.
I enjoy the lights and decorations. Shoot me but I also enjoy the presents that I give. I would truly be fine if I didn’t get a thing.
I love wrapping gifts, and my family says I have a talent for it.
We do limited lights outside, a decorated tree inside, and a series of small holiday meals/gift giving gatherings.
What I no longer do: cookies, cards, stockings, and indoor decorations other than the tree.
I no longer do a lot of decorating and stopped sending cards a few years ago. Only buy gifts for H, the kids, my parents and MIL and 2 teenage nieces.
I haven’t baked in years but I will be attending a holiday get together next weekend with some women I really want to see and there is a cookie exchange. Since I have a get together with my book club a few nights later, I’ll just double the batch.
Deb, would you feel differently if there was snow on the ground??
I wouldn’t! I have never been a big fan of Christmas. Of course I enjoy the day and all, and I love buying for my kids, but I HATE the idea that one holiday seems to take a month out of the year. So wrong for me! So I guess that’s where doing what you like and not sweating the rest comes into play.
I always tell people that I just like everyday life. I don’t need the holiday scene! I like my everyday routine, the way my house looks “undecorated” and my favorite shopping day of the year is like January 10 when the stores are all put back together, the aisles are empty and shopping is not such a mission.
I don’t go near any mall on December weekends.
I don’t exchange gifts with extended family members unless we are getting together in person.
We have not visited anyone overnight for Christmas since our first child was born. Happy to have anyone and their pets visit us, but we are staying home.
I no longer put out the little lighted ceramic village, though I havent gotten rid of it yet, either.
This year I got down to the second layer (of three) of the third box of tree decorations, and just thought, “Nah”, and stopped. One of my three kids is bound to say, “Hey! Where’s that wooden nutcracker ornament? It’s my favorite,”
I don’t do decorating that involves ladders.
I don’t send cards to anyone I haven’t heard from in 2 years. Still sending (and receiving) ~100 cards.
I don’t attend holiday parties involving product sales.
What DO I do?
- Watch Elf, Christmas Vacation, Home Alone and A Christmas Story as often as humanly possible.
- Enjoy all our holiday music CD’s
- Put out and fill stockings, which my mom and I hand knit (I knit the last two when she passed the pattern on to me).
- Shop bit by bit all year, and insist on a list from my adult kids, complete with sizes, colors and alternate choices.
- Turn on the tree lights every second that I am at home. I love them.
- We still make decorated christmas cookies - thank you Pillsbury tubes of cookie dough - because we still put out a plate of cookies for Santa. I kid you not. And my three kids are 25, 22 and 18. But last year I was going to let that tradition go, and they insisted. Mostly we make gingerbread boy/ girl shaped cookies, which they decorate to look as unflateringly like us all as possible. “This one is Dad, in his “I give up” Dr. Pepper flannel pants.” “This one is S2 in those psychodelic running shorts and old lacrosse pinney” . Its funnier than it reads.
And my favorite moment of all, I think, is:
7. Go outside at sunset on the shortest day of the year and lift a glass of wine to the changing of the seasons, and to the return of longer days ahead!
I don’t diet.