If you’re one of those people that shrink at the sound of sleighbells and crumple at the thought of Christmas dinners, you’re clearly not alone. A staggering 88% of those surveyed singled out the Christmas holidays as being the most stressful time of the year. And it’s easy to see why. What began as a low-key Bethlehem baby shower has snowballed into a military-style operation involving trees, trimmings, cards, gifts and enough food to last us till February. So to rein things in, take a sleigh ride with us into a level-headed land of sanity as we unpack your Christmas crisis to help you get to January in one piece.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew
Christmas should never be celebrated at the expense of your health, so if you’ve been saddled with the lion’s share of the work, consider delegating one or two tasks. Look for shortcuts, wherever possible. Do you really have time to work origami magic on those paper napkins you bought for the dinner table? And would anyone really complain if you made that dairy-free trifle sherry-less?
Don’t sweat over the size of the tree
As that popular song goes, it’s not about the money. Nor how many fairy lights are hanging from your eaves. Nor the height of your Norway spruce in relation to your neighbour’s. Nor any of the other little irrelevances that can niggle away at us unchecked. So resist being swept along by the tide of commercialism and enjoy Christmas for what it should be: a time for gathering together with loved ones, even if some are more lovable than others. And if a guest laughs at the size of your tree, tell them to bring their own next time.
You don’t have to change your religion
You shouldn’t have to transform your whole world at Christmas, even if that appears to be the trend around you. If you’re not into rowdy, alcohol-induced games of Twister, you’re perfectly at liberty to decline. So avoid betraying your principles or altering your preferred diet in response to ‘Come on, it’s Christmas!’ You do you.
Prepare for questions
Christmas is often a time for coming face to face with people you’ve spent 12 months of the year avoiding, or counting down the days to see – it could be either. Whatever the situation, the event is usually something of a reunion, with plenty for all to catch up on. As such, you could find yourself at the receiving end of 365 days’ worth of questions, for which you might want to prepare a few answers before the air is filled with enquiries as to your relationship status, your future plans to procreate and your reason for turning vegan. If your replies fail to satisfy your interrogators, it could be time to get out the Scrabble.
It’s your Christmas too
If you get to the end of the Christmas break and realise you’ve laboured the whole way through it, that’s technically called employment, and Christmas to you will be forever associated with unregulated unpaid overtime. Even if Santa has left you a sackful of chores without a single little helper in sight, you should still try to work in some me time. No one wants to enter the lounge and find you passed out under the tree, unless passing out was your ultimate aim, of course. Anything from a meet-up with friends to a meditative soak in the bath can help relieve that seasonal stress.
So before the big day kicks off, seek out a quiet corner and spend some moments digesting the above. And as you get ready to meet the challenges ahead, may you feel empowered to welcome and embrace not only this Christmas but all future Christmases to come, so that a year from now, when the hampers begin to reappear in the shops and the carolling starts up again, those bobtail bells might sound less like a death knell and more like the jolly jingle they ought to be.
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