Project Holidays: My Plan to Beat Holiday Season Fatigue this Year
Most of the people close to me know that I am adamant about not celebrating Christmas too early - but not everyone knows why. When I was in middle school and high school I sang in a professional choir, and performed as a soloist and as a choir ringer for most of my adult life as well. That means that for more than half my life, I was used to Christmas music practice kicking off in August or early September - and I kept on singing it straight through until December 25th. And by the time I actually got to Christmas, I couldn't stand to hear Silent Night one more damn time.
My CCMA (Chronic Christmas Music Avoidance) might have something to do with why I avoid doing anything holiday-season-related until much closer to the actual occasions - and as a result, I'm usually doing way too much in a very short amount of time in the two weeks before Christmas. So this year, I'm changing things up and making plans to get ahead of the stuff that tends to stress me out the most, so I can actually enjoy the season more this year. Here's what I'm doing, in case it helps you too.
Come up with a budget - for everything - right now.
It's a little nuts to me that I haven't done this before now, but my husband and I are setting actual goal numbers for our holiday costs - particularly since we are consciously scaling way back our holiday spending this year (as I know a lot of people are right now). That includes a target spend for gifts, holiday cards, gift wrapping stuff, donations we're planning on, and grocery cost estimates for the gatherings that we're hosting. We're also factoring in travel costs for the occasions when we'll be leaving town to see family around the holidays.
We're using our weekly finance meetings to sock away some money every week, so that the costs don't surprise us once the holidays are here. The other motivator for getting this category of stuff done early this year is so we can shop small and allow for more shipping time, and avoid having to rush ordering from larger retailers (ahem, especially those that support a certain administration that I definitely do not).
Make the family gathering plans now, and socialize them.
Since we got married, our holiday plans have shifted basically every year due to what was going on in our lives at the time: where we were living in relation to our families, whether or not we had an infant to plan around, and so on. Since my family is on the bigger side, I know it's important to share our plans (i.e. which gatherings we can attend and which ones we can't) as early as we can. This year, we've made those plans even earlier than usual and have figured out some additional days to visit with family members we may not get to spend as much time with. Planning all of this ahead of time also means that I have a more accurate head count for the holiday gatherings that I'm hosting at our home.
Chip away at the stuff that takes up your time during the holidays - and remove some of the pressure and stress.
Sure, there are things that you can't do advance - like make a holiday meal a few days ahead or set up a Christmas tree in the fall (I know there are folks out there who do the latter, but I'm not one of them). However, there are plenty of things that I can, in fact, get ahead of - like writing holiday cards, getting gifts wrapped and storing them away a few weeks before Christmas, and going through our decorations and gift wrapping gear from last year to take stock of what I can reuse or repurpose. To actually make this happen, I'm assigning 1-2 tasks for myself and my husband per week leading up to the holidays so we can make progress steadily.
I hope this helps - I'll keep you posted on how it goes, and let me know if you try any of this out yourself!