Make time for the Holidays

they only come once a year.

I am personally torn regarding the Holidays. By holidays I mean, Thanksgiving and Christmas. And by torn I mean, I love and am completely stressed by certain aspects of them all at the same time. I believe it’s called ‘growing up’. Keep reading to hear my thoughts and opinions and please share your own as I said, I’m torn and perhaps your stories and insight might shed some light on my own.

Making time to really enjoy the holidays is hard. As an adult, there are menus to create, groceries to purchase, meals to prepare, food to serve, leftovers to pack up, and dishes to wash. That’s just the food aspect and doesn’t even cover the thought that goes into each gift, the creation of a handmade one versus buying a material item, the scheduling or taking of photos for the holiday card, the searching high and low for the right gift or the highly sought after gift, the hiding them, the wrapping them and the anticipation of the surprise and looks on their faces upon receiving them. The judgments, disappointments, fake smiles, or the sheer love of them. It’s so stressful.

As a child, even a teenager and young adult, the holidays could only be described as magical. I feel my mom made it feel that way and I feel I am not doing it justice for my own daughter as I feel differently as an adult. I love the memories of what used to be the holidays. In my family, it actually depended on the year as to what we did. Swapping sides of the family we spend it with or do we double up and try to do it all in a day with both? Always a good time however now as an adult leads to stress due to decisions, choices and planning.

One memory was the kids’ table at grandma’s house. Imagine the joy in the chaos I’m about the describe, food packed onto folding tables that were brought into the house so we could do buffet style with 30 plus people crammed in line, plates in hand, fork shoved in your back pocket so you had a free hand to shovel food onto your plate and finding a spot to sit along random tables placed throughout the house and enjoy the feast. The noise generated by all the conversations and us kids laughing, wrestling and playing. Other years we would spend with a smaller family group and it was more formal, with real plates and silverware, table clothes and proper serving bowls. A different assortment of sides but still a feast, still connecting with family. Still all great memories.

The same goes for Christmas. The anticipation! The memories of mom hiding the presents in clear sight under blankets with threats to return them if you looked, and you knew she would find out and do it. So for weeks they just sat there, untouched, unwrapped… yeah, anticipation. The presents were only part of it but you believed in Santa if you lived in my house because we were farmers and didn’t have much money so there is no way that my parents could afford ski equipment and apparel the year I asked for it. It must be Santa! We got the essentials but then Santa brought us the biggest, most amazing gifts that he knew mom and dad couldn’t afford. Those were memories.

It all started Christmas Eve at our house; Chuch Service with my grandma and then we would head to her house for our traditional Russell Tomato Rarebit, a simple but amazing tomato and cheese sauce that we placed over saltines with a simple side of Waldorf Salad and Green Jello infused with green raw peppers in the circle mold, the center filled with cottage cheese. (not my favorite, but I’d always have a spoon full because it was polite). This tradition has carried on through the years and I still prepare the rarebit every Christmas Eve, perhaps the sides have changed because jello, green peppers and cottage cheese together are just wrong, and apples with mayonnaise may not be a crowd-pleaser. But each year we have Rarebit and I am always brought back to my childhood and Christmas Eve at my Grandma’s house.

Now on Christmas morning, oh how we would all jump out of bed early and be scooted out of the house to the barn to do our chores and then brought back in and changed before unwrapping the gifts, enjoying breakfast together all before heading out to another large family gathering where more food would be served. Holidays is about the food, the family and the traditions.

Those memories live on and are there but it’s what makes the holidays now a little less for me. The traditions seem to be evolving or not as secure in their placement as each holiday passes. I no longer am near a large family and the celebrations seem less so. As an adult we move into the stage of we are the one with the meals to prepare, planning of all the things and stressing over the gifts and what others will think of them. I want to make the holidays simple again. I want not to worry about presents, and to have the meal a family activity that we do together and enjoy together. I want our time to be blessed not with what we have received in the form of gifts. I want the time together to be enjoyed, simply, not with plans, not with activities specifically, just that we are together, eating and enjoying each other. That is the holidays I want to make time for. They only come once a year and always seem to arrive quickly after Halloween and bunch together on each other skirt tails and come in like a whirlwind and then BOOM a brand New Year is there. I am always left wondering where the time went.

This year I want to remember what was and take the time to enjoy my family. Take the time to travel to see my parents, and spend days with them, not just hours. Time is fleeting as I have covered in one of my previous post ‘A Father’s Heart’ and I want to enjoy every moment we have left together, and please let that be several more years.

The holidays are also hard and stressful due to finances and especially this year with the cost of inflation, the food, the presents, the decorations all costing 10 to 15 percent more only adding to that stress. I want to share my thought on Christmas Lists, Wish Lists and Lists in general.

Please give me ideas! Please share with me what your kiddos like, want and/or what you think they would enjoy. We all know that we don’t spend enough time together to know as much as we should about even ourselves, let alone the family that is distant from us. Lend a helping hand, you know your kids, and you know your family best. I apologize that I don’t know more about them and am trying to regain the connections, the question is how, with schedules, with lives and being distant from one another (but that’s for a different day and blog post). I will take this moment also to share my feelings on aging parents that perhaps have a hard time getting out and around themselves, most likely unable to learn the internet and how shopping online works with all this new technology. When they want to give you money or trust you enough to give their credit card number so you can do the shopping, it’s one or two more gifts, add it to your list and take a little stress off of them.

So what’s that cc # again? [Insert laugh, cuz that was funny]

Let’s do our best this holiday season to take the stress off ourselves and away from those we love so that we can enjoy each other and the actual meaning of these holidays.

Giving thanks for what we have and hold closest, being grateful and celebrating the birth of our Christ and Savior, Jesus, and how he came to give us love, hope and joy.

Let’s be grateful and give thanks for all the love, hope and joy in our lives.

#HappyHolidays #StaySane #ShareYourLists