A Better Holiday Bucket List

There are a hundred bazillion bucket lists out there for the holiday season. There are lists of things to bake, things to wear, things to do with your family at home, things to do away from the house, things to buy…so many THINGS TO DO.

If you read my last blog, you’ll remember what I wrote about kids and holidays and stress and anxiety. My goal this year is not to fall into that trap, and to help you avoid it, as well. It doesn’t have to be stressful.

So here, to help both you and me, is my holiday bucket list. Some of them are things to do, and some of them are caveats about things you might do. Some of them are things NOT to do.

Before you even read it, make sure you are prepared to disregard the parts of it that stress you out or don’t bring you peace and joy. My whole plan this year is for our holiday season to be joyful and as stress-free as it is possible to be with three young children, none of whom could be described as “easy-going.” These are the things we will do that sound like fun and will hopefully not be super stressful. As always, we’ll be prepared to pivot if things go south.

Without further adieu, here is our family’s holiday bucket list:

Snuggle the sleeping kid in front of the tree. Got a baby? A toddler? A preschooler? A cuddly elementary kid? This is a MUST for me every year and will continue to be so until my kids are too big for me to carry them sleeping back to their beds. This is the ultimate in holiday relaxation for me, and benefits them tremendously! 
That physical contact, even in their sleep, has such a beneficial effect on their nervous systems, releasing oxytocin and lowering cortisol levels. (Check out my last blog for more information on that!) I’m pretty sure sitting in front of a glowing Christmas tree holding a sleeping kiddo lowers my blood pressure to near-catatonic levels, but in a good way. The glow of the tree lights on their sweet, sleeping faces…it’s just everything.

This is my version of heaven.

This is a bucket list item that can be repeated over and over again throughout the holiday season! Give yourself permission to ignore the dishes in the sink or the laundry or whatever else you’d be doing after kid bedtime. Just be in the moment while they’re still small enough to sleep in your arms.

Decorate the tree imperfectly and probably in stages. I admit that I look forward to the day when all five of us can decorate the tree together, like full, functioning humans, having seasonal snacks and listening to Christmas music and not breaking anything. 
Until then, I will accept that this dream is entirely unrealistic. We have a first grader, a toddler, and an infant. It’s not getting done all at once, and it’s not going to be picture-perfect. And that has to be okay. Mr. Middle wants desperately to help, but is the opposite of helpful, so we have to look for ways for him to feel helpful. Baby B just wants to put everything in his mouth. Big Girl has finally reached the point of being able to untangle lights, spread ornaments out decently well around the tree, and actually get the hooks over the branches without poking her fingers.

So this year, we did the bare minimum during the day, so that Mr. Middle felt helpful. Then we put the little boys to bed and let Big Girl stay up late and decorate with us. (This sort of contradicts part of my previous blog regarding maintaining sleep, but the little boys’ sleep schedule was upheld, and we know from previous experience that Big Girl can handle one later night on the weekend.)

It was some excellent bonding time with Big Girl, and it took all the stress out of the experience. It was peaceful. It was quiet. We saved a couple of ornaments for Mr. Middle to hang the next day, when we could focus on helping him.

And we have bitten our tongues ever since as he has moved various ornaments to visually-awkward places on the tree and added random things like sunglasses and hair ties to the decorations. Such is life right now.

Having the perfect tree OR the perfect tree-decorating-experience is a joy to be had in a different season of life. There are other joys to be had in this season, and they are intense joys that we will miss so much down the road.

Also, in case you were wondering how we are handling having a crawling baby and a Christmas tree, we have barricaded it with bookshelves full of our collection of holiday books!

Christmas books as baby gate!

Read all the holiday books! As you can see from the picture above, we have rather an insane collection of holiday books. It’s an addiction, but there are worse vices, right? The good news is, you don’t have to have a classroom full of books! The library has all of them PLUS SOME I DON’T EVEN OWN. (Literally, when I quit teaching public school kindergarten, I brought all the books home that I had added to my classroom over the years. Hence the three shelves of holiday books.)

It’s easy to forget that our young children don’t know everything about Christmas (in terms of its secular or religious aspects). They don’t know who the Grinch is, they don’t know all the words to the songs, they don’t know all the traditions. The solution is READ ALL THE BOOKS. I rotate seasonal and holiday books out every month around here but let me just tell you how intense my excitement is when we get out the December bin. (Okay, it’s bins. Plural. Hi, my name’s Elise and I buy books.) These are my favorite books of the WHOLE YEAR. My kids love making sure we read all of them by Christmas, and they each have their favorites, which change year to year. These start to feel like old, familiar friends that visit each holiday season.

When I go to my parents’ house, I have the same nostalgic sense of meeting old friends when I reread all of THEIR holiday children’s books. (My addiction is genetic.) Holiday books are such a beautiful way to build traditions with your kids.

View cookie decorating and gingerbread house decorating as process over product (just like my process art page) We love to decorate gingerbread houses, and we love to decorate sugar cookies! (Side note though, our elder children are extremely sensitive to artificial dye, so we have to get a little creative with both of these activities to make sure it’s all dyed naturally.)

We go into it with an open mind, though. We do not expect it to be pretty. We expect that gingerbread house to be an absolute mess of frosting, vomited on by sprinkles. We do not get involved unless the kids ask us. We try really hard to stand back and let them go at it! There is a strong connection here to my page on process art (also a blog here explaining a great example of process art.)

Essentially, these activities should be about the process, not the end result. There is no “right” way for the house or the cookie to look when your kids are finished with it. If they had fun creating it, CONGRATULATIONS, you’ve won!

As another side note, some years we have baked a gingerbread CAKE (in a house-shaped mold) and it was so much simpler than the gingerbread house made of cookie pieces. So that’s something to consider, in the name of simplifying things.

Think hard about the Santa visit - is it worth it? Enjoyable? Does it stress them out? Are photos of your child with Santa a make-or-break part of your holiday? If the answer to this is, “yes,”that’s awesome! But maybe you’re afraid your child is going to scream or be really upset and you’ve got yourself worried into knots about it - that’s a whole lot of family stress before you ever get to the photo area.

Think long and hard about what your individual children are actually like, and how they really feel about strangers. Maybe you can come up with something a little less traditional. I know a few friends whose kids are terrific with Santa, and many others whose tots are flat-out terrified. My sister’s son falls in this second category, so she always holds him on her lap or stands beside Santa. They’ve gotten some cute pictures that way, rather than having a stressed-out Santa hanging onto a screaming tot. My husband and I are actually undecided so far this year. I’ll keep you posted. One thing we definitely will NOT be doing is taking pictures of our unhappy kids with some Santa stranger if, in fact, our kids don’t seem thrilled about getting close to a large red-clad stranger with his face hidden by a white beard.

Drink hot chocolate. That’s it. Sit and drink it with your kids. (Or with yourself!) This is such a great opportunity for mindfulness - to just be present in the moment. Notice all the things around you. Stare at the tree. Listen to your children, really listen, to whatever it is they feel the need to say. Think about the sweetness and the warmth of your hot chocolate and ponder the joy it’s bringing you in that moment. You don’t have to do anything else for it to be a worthwhile moment. These are the kinds of things our kids remember, and these are the kinds of experiences that make a holiday season memorable.

Wear comfortable pajamas. Please note I did NOT say, “Put on matching pajamas.” This is a recent phenomenon that has somehow become a “necessary” part of a family Christmas. Does this mean we haven’t done it here at our house? It surely does not…we have definitely done the matching jammies. But not every year. This year, I’m not stressing about it unless the kids ask. Big Girl just might, and then I’ll make it happen. But I’m not spending a bunch of money on pajamas we will likely only wear all at the same time exactly once, for one photo in which I will very likely have to bribe everyone into smiling.

I’m not sure how the family matchy-matchy became a thing. I really do honestly love to have my kids in matching clothes, and to match them sometimes…but cross this off your list right now if it doesn’t genuinely bring you joy, and definitely don’t do it if it’s not really in your budget. I promise there are zero people on Instagram specifically looking for your matching pajama photo. No one cares.

Pick and choose your kid activities: And here’s another thing: You don’t have to include everyone in everything…if your toddler is wrecking everyone's sugar cookies faster than they can decorate them, let him watch the Grinch, or ice them during naptime. Again. If you have to finish decorating the tree by putting Littles to bed and letting Bigs stay up, THAT’S OK. Save them like three balls to hang the next morning when their heads are on straight for a minute. Those Littles will have plenty of years to do all the decorating with you! And plenty of years to actually decorate sugar cookies, instead of eating everything in sight and smashing their sister’s cookies.

It doesn’t take away from the magic of the Christmas lights if you only take your older kids. In fact, for us, keeping the baby and toddler at home until next year definitely makes the experience more enjoyable!

Other than those few things, I don’t have a list this year. I’m trying super hard to do just the things that have become traditions for our family, and not do a darn thing extra unless we all genuinely want to. When it comes right down to it, we just want more time connected as a family. That’s what makes us all happiest, and that’s what our kids - and yours - will remember. So feel free to skim all those other lists out there - I do it all the time! There are some awesome, fun ideas out there! But then, eliminate all the items you’ve added to your list that don’t bring your family joy. Cross out the things that seem stressful and not worthwhile this year. Save them for another year, if you like! (Possibly a future year when you have older, less flammable children?) You don’t have to fit it all in this year.

Anyone have an idea for “keeping Christmas” in a lower-key way that I have missed? I’d love to hear about it! Drop me a comment below. And if this has helped you rethink the insanity surrounding this busy, busy season, please let me know as well!