Hello, 2013! What I Need to Change Next Christmas
As much as I enjoy Christmas, I enjoy the weeks that follow it. I love the calm, the platters of half-eaten cookies, even the mess in the house. The work is over.
Three days before Christmas I had a melt down. After 32 years of preparing Christmas for my family you’d think that I’d learn how to avoid melt downs, but I haven’t. Every year, I repeat the same pattern.
The month preceding Christmas, I gear up with baking, cleaning, buying yarn to knit things, pulling Christmas decorations out of the basement and stringing lights on the trees in front of our house. In addition to my normal workload, I add hours each day working to help make Christmas special for my family. At the beginning, I love it. I kindly ask my husband to help and he usually does. After a day or two, he loses interest and I find myself shopping alone, baking alone and decorating the Christmas tree alone. After a week or two of this, you can guess what I begin to do- feel sorry for myself that I’m working solo.
Still, in the spirit of being a “good mom,” I trudge on. I change bedsheets, cook casseroles and freeze them, buy gifts for the needy (usually my husband’s idea since I’m so busy) and help out with Christmas goings-on at church. By December 21st, I’m feeling like the supreme martyr and am more than eager for everyone in my family to heap praises and thank you’s over me. I deserve them because I’ve worked so hard to make everyone happy. The martyr in me begins to listen for kind words and gets annoyed when they don’t come.
So three days before Christmas, when my husband complained that I was irritable, I let him have it. How dare he criticize Mrs. Claus, Mother Teresa and Martha Stewart rolled into me? I was, after all, exhausting myself for him and the kids. The least he could do (since he clearly didn’t understand how hard I worked, how important I was to keeping family traditions and making the holiday special), was to be nice to me. For three days, I fumed. He was completely unappreciative and selfish.
Have you been there? Every mother has. We who love through cooking and creating memories replete with important tastes and smells, exhaust ourselves to make life nice for our families. Then, we get mad when no one notices or worse, when they complain about our hard work. The truth is, much of what we do to make Christmas special, we do for ourselves.
Yes, kids love traditions and great meals, but they really love it when Mom is in a good mood. How much kinder I would have been to them if I had cut a few meals, plates of cookies and left some beds for them to change and been fresh when they came home for Christmas? I thought that running around like a crazy woman would make us have a better Christmas but usually the work backfires. I want to feel like a great mom. I want to give gifts that make them happier than the gifts from last year. I want to feel like they all need me to have a great Christmas. Then, I get upset when my exhaustion makes me irritable and fights break out.
Next year, I’ll probably repeat much of this, but I am determined to make some important changes. So, how about this for a New Year’s resolution that looks all the way to Christmas 2013:
Worry less. Cook less. Clean less.
I’m not going to fret so much about “creating a great experience”; I will focus more on being refreshed and nice to be around. I think that my adult children would prefer to have me greet them at the door with a warm smile that says, “I’m SO happy to see you!” while standing on a dirty floor, than with a snarl that says, “How dare you make me work so hard by showing up?”
Nope. Next year, I’m going to do less, jettison the martyr cape and enjoy my family. If we cook together, great. If we don’t, then maybe we’ll go for a hike instead. Regardless, I’m going to work on giving them a nicer me instead of more food, homemade gifts, and dozens of Christmas cookies.
How about you? How was Christmas at your house this year?
What did you learn in 2012 and what are your resolutions for the new year?
Happy New Year to you and yours!
5 Responses to “Hello, 2013! What I Need to Change Next Christmas”
Dear Dr. Meeker, I think part of this is the tendency toward perfectionism. I let our 6-year-old decorate the tree this year, almost exclusively by himself, and it’s perfectly beautiful. It looks like a 1st grader was on the job, but that is what makes it so lovely. I used gift boxes instead of meticulously wrapping presents in most cases, and it mattered little to any of the gift recipients. I also gave up the desire to bake for everyone I knew and focused on just making special meals and baked goods for my immediate family. It has taken me 17 years to learn these lessons, and admittedly, I did fix the tree a little (I have my standards-only 1 ornament per branch, please!), but all in all, it put me and my loved ones in a better place..Bethlehem, adoring the new born babe who is love and peace itself. Thank you for the great article, Dr. Meeker, and Happy New Year! (I will keep it as a reminder for next year!)
I too have been at this for 32 years, and this was the first year that I could remember that I didn’t have a meltdown. It was such an amazing feeling!
It helped to not have to shop for the grandparents’ gifts for the kids (with 9 kids, 4 grandkids and 4 sets of grandparents, that was a lot of extra gift-buying!)
I forced myself to cut back on much of what I was doing because I’m now working part-time. I found that none of it really mattered!
I’m always aiming for amazing, but what my family really wants is a happy, relaxed mom. They don’t really care about amazing!
Most likely, I will have to continue to cut-back and maybe eliminate goodie platters for our friends, but I know our friends understand! We all feel so frazzled around the holidays, and we should encourage each other to do less and be relaxed and happy moms instead of amazing moms. I may need to avoid pinterest around the holidays!
Christmas was work! I’ve also resolved to make next Christmas easier. I always say that I want to have all my gifts done by Thanksgiving, but I really mean it this time! Maybe even before school starts! And have meals and cookies done ahead of time in the freezer. I want to enjoy my kids when they are off of school, not just sleep because I’m exhausted. Thanks for this post!
MY Christmas expectations were very low for this year. Our 14 year old son came out of the hospital on Dec 18 for anxiety depression and suicidal thoughts. To follow up with treatment I would be making 2 trips per day to a partial hospitalization program for my son and trying to keep up with my part time job and 9 year old special needs son. I knew survival depended on simplifying our Holiday. I decided we would just work on keeping one tradition this year; 7 fish on Christmas Eve for the 7 sacraments. Everything else I would play by ear. If it added to our joy we would go for it,but plans were very flexible depending on how life was going that moment. I simplified gift giving by buying my children things like tickets to a broadway show (cheap seats), cooking classes, art classes, etc. Shopping was done on line or by phone mainly. We only made about 3 types of cookies but that meant we ate less. We got to Mass as a family, watched old movies like “It’s a wonderful Life” and it was much better than I expected. Not Norman Rockwell but that was ok once I agreed to give up that image this year. What I learned from this is no one was disappointed or grumpy. Simple was better. I will try to remember this every year.
You need to read this to yourself on November 1st, 2013.