Putting the peace and joy back into Christmas
Christmas is getting a reputation for being the most stressful time of the year, but how can planning a family Christmas be fun?
Wherever you may turn for advice on planning a family Christmas, it’s generally assumed that it will be a stressful time no matter what your intentions. Articles with snappy titles like ‘The Week by Week No Stress Christmas Calendar’ and ‘Things to Do in Summer for a Stress Free Christmas’ are fairly common. But does it have to be this way? Why does Christmas, which is supposed to be one of the most fun times of the year for families, get such bad press?
My feeling is that family Christmases have such a reputation for being stressful nowadays, that planning them has become more about avoiding the stress than actually enjoying them together. Helpful articles like those listed above tend to assume that everyone reading them is intent on the traditional family Christmas, the kind of Christmas we see every day in the afternoon films aired from the beginning of November. And if that is genuinely the best type of gathering for you and your family you should go for it, but it’s still worth stopping for a minute to think about why you’re celebrating in the first place.
I always had big family Christmases when I was growing up. Aunts and uncles, grandparents, family friends and neighbours all came for Christmas dinner, sometimes with even more people popping in for a piece of Christmas cake or a mince pie throughout the day. One of the best Christmases when I was little was the time we got snowed in. Me, my mum and my dad took a sledge to the castle in the village where everyone was making the most of the snow by whizzing down the sides of the moat. If you went fast enough on the way down, you could make it halfway up the other side before you slid back down again.
I love December and the lead up to Christmas, but the day itself has never really been my favourite (I much prefer the underrated Christmas Eve). This is partly because for the last few years I’ve applied myself to planning festive events for visitors rather than thinking about my own, and partly because we don’t have those big family Christmases anymore. I’ve been looking for an alternative, and this is how I’ve been working it out.
Why are you doing it?
I love Priya Parker’s TED talk on ‘3 steps to turn everyday get-togethers into transformative gatherings’. I’m not sure many people would describe Christmas Day as an everyday get-together, but Parker’s challenge works for all sorts of events: how do you get people to connect and be changed by their experiences? The first step is to ask yourself why you’re doing it, and invent the gathering around that single purpose. Is it to celebrate the religious festival? Is it to make fun memories with your children? Is it to spend time together as a community? It could be a little bit of each of these things, but it could be helpful to know where your priorities lie and who it’s all for. If we don’t, we skip to the bit with the decorations and the food and the presents which, Parker says, “not only leads to dull and repetitive gatherings, it misses the opportunity to address our needs.”
Who is it for?
When you’re thinking about who this Christmas is for, don’t forget that you can (and should!) be part of your target audience. Make plans that you enjoy putting in place and allow yourself some space to enjoy it yourself on the day. Make sure that your plans involve at least one thing that you personally enjoy doing, or one thing that you want to learn as part of your planning — what are you getting out of this? This year I’m plotting an elaborate Christmas cake, partly because our eldest son is old enough to a) appreciate Christmas cake for the seasonal delight that it is, and b) be mildly amused by some fun cake toppers. But also because I’ve quite enjoyed baking this year, I’m ready for a fondant challenge, and thanks to lockdown restrictions I won’t be under pressure to produce something beautiful for a large number of people. Thus saving myself from judgement.
A lot of articles will tell you that you should be doing some sort of community service, but that’s assuming that you’re in a position to do so. Remember the Mother Theresa quote, “If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family.” Or, as my mum used to prefer, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” If you’re doing something specifically because the aim of your Christmas is to help people, or one of the things you’re doing lends itself to going bigger (if you accidentally bake too many Christmas biscuits and it’s best to share them further afield) then go for it — just don’t try and plan a kids Christmas, adult Christmas, self-care Christmas and community Christmas all in one. Maybe the reason people feel the need to start planning in the summer is because they’ve just given themselves too much to do.
What’s the theme?
Now you’re ready to move on to content. What parts of Christmas are important to you? Do you have any family traditions that you could use or repurpose? Maybe you have particular decorations that you would like to place centre-stage, or you know that there’s a board game your family love to play after dinner (unless you’re watching the Queens’ Speech, of course).
For me, the Christmas menu is incredibly important. I have to disagree with those (including my husband) who suggest that Christmas dinner is just a Sunday roast. There has to be turkey and pigs in blankets, and there must be Christmas pudding. I will not tolerate a Yule log on Christmas Day, it’s just not right. But maybe you don’t like turkey at any other time of year, so why would you eat it now? Don’t do it just because it’s Christmassy. If you don’t see the point in Christmas crackers by the side of your plate, don’t have them. As Michael McIntyre rightly points out, “who looked at Christmas lunch and said, ‘I know what this needs — a paper hat, a banjo and some toenail clippers.’”
What does Christmas Day look like?
Anything you like, as long as it answers your why and is appropriate for the people who are important to you. Keep it simple by working from your theme, don’t be tempted to do things just because it’s Christmas! Know what resources you have available (your budget and your time, equipment, and anyone who might be willing to help) and what you can realistically achieve with what you’ve got. Don’t overstretch, otherwise you’re going to be reaching for those helpful articles again.
This is the year of the Covid Christmas so we’ve been nudged into doing something completely different. What was going to be a big family Christmas back in the homeland is now an extremely small Christmas for four, harking back to my days on that sledge in the moat. At the time of writing we can’t go to a restaurant, go on holiday or even stay with family, so after a great deal of thought we’ve decided to go for a picnic on Christmas Day instead. It will be our little family, on a winter walk, with all of our favourite food (the baby will be experimenting with actual food by then, so at least we won’t have to clean the walls afterwards). I’m under no illusions and we’re working through our potential issues with the weather, but at least we’re keeping it simple. After all, we have to be able to fit everything in the car.
This year, I’m enjoying the challenge of planning an entirely different family Christmas. It’s a time to acknowledge that hardly anything about this year has been normal, but I also want to celebrate the creativity and the adventures we’ve had along the way. How we spend the day will reflect how we’ve stripped things back rather than doing things because we feel it’s what the occasion demands, and we’ll do what we can to make something wonderful out of some very real logistical restrictions rather than doing something or anything to pass the time until we can spend time together with our wider family.
Parker says that, “the way we gather matters, because how we gather is how we live.” If that’s the case, I want our Christmas to say something about how we’ve got through this year: putting our family first with creativity and resourcefulness. And a lot of cake.
