If Christmas left you exhausted and broke, this post is for you. Why? Because we have a new way of doing the holidays that you might like.
OK, actually it’s an old way. But we’ve made it new again and we want to share it with you.
First, let’s be clear that I am writing from a place of faith, but you don’t need to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday to benefit from our approach.
This approach can help anyone to slow down and get more out of the holiday season, whether you celebrate in a faith-based or secular way.
So, let’s get to the point, shall we? Here’s how we slow down the holidays in 6 steps…
Step 1: Make Christmas Day the beginning, not the end
So many people treat December 25th like some kind of race to the finish line. And on the 26th, it’s like they have a massive holiday hangover. They can’t wait to put the decorations away and be done with the whole thing. Stop doing that!!
December 25th isn’t the end date. It’s the beginning. Christmas is a season. In the old days, it was 12 days long (hence the song The 12 Days of Christmas). Christmas ended with Epiphany on January 6th.
Today the Church celebrates it as an octave, meaning it ends on whatever Sunday is closest to January 6th. But at home, keep the party going!
“What?” you’re thinking. “I’m so sick of Christmas by then that I just want to be done.”
Right. Because you left out the most important part: Advent.
Step 2: Celebrate Advent
For Christians, Advent is the time of preparing for Christ’s coming into the world. It used to be a lot like Lent, in fact, complete with fasting.
It’s not like that anymore, but it is still a time to prepare. And what does that mean in a secular world? Even if you’re not preparing your heart in a spiritual way, you can prepare your home slowly.
To everyone who puts up a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, just stop! The tree goes up for Christmas, not Advent. In the old days, the tree went up on Christmas Eve. Even in Bob’s family, his parents set up the tree on Christmas Eve after the kids went to bed.
Why? Because it is a CHRISTMAS tree. You put it up at Christmas and leave it up until the end of the Christmas season.
At our house, with constantly changing work schedules, we can’t count on both being home Christmas Eve, so we set it up a few days before, on whatever day works. And it stays up until January 7th.
Step 3: Decorate over time
This really helped me to take the pressure off when I started doing this. Rather than throw up all the decorations all at once, spread it out. As long as you have all the decorations up by Christmas Eve, you’re good! At our house, the nativity goes up the first Sunday of Advent (empty: see below). I put out my Santa collection on Dec. 6th, the feast of St. Nicholas. We put lights up around mid-month, again depending on work schedules. (We currently have cats that mean we don’t decorate as much as we used to.)
Then we put the decorations away slowly. We leave the nativity, tree and lights up until January 6th or 7th, but everything else gets put away a little at a time, in reverse order.
Step 4: Save the sweets
We don’t eat Christmas cookies until Christmas. We bake them ahead of time and they stay in the freezer. This makes Christmas seem more like Christmas because it’s the waiting and the prize.
Before I started doing this, I’d bake cookies and we’d eat them all before Christmas. There was one Christmas Eve when my kids were little that I was baking cookies that night because we didn’t have anything left to put out for Santa! Crazy!!
Now we have the anticipation of knowing we will break out our delicious cookies on the special day.
Step 5: Spread out the gift giving
If you’ve ever seen kids do the crash and burn after a frenzied Christmas morning opening gifts, you’ve wondered if there is a better way. And there is: Spread the gifts out over the 12 days of Christmas.
These aren’t big gifts. At our house, they’ve taken the place of stockings. We give our big gifts on Christmas, then little ones, one per day, until January 6th. But you could spread out the big gifts too!
Once you’ve spread out the gift giving and there’s one every day, you will never go back to the crazy way.
Step 6: Celebrate the end of Christmas
We had our first 12th Night party in 2022 and wondered why we had never done it before. It was so much fun to celebrate the end of the Christmas season with a party!
You don’t have to have a party, but marking the end of the Christmas season in some way will help you to not feel the burnout of treating Christmas like a one-day event.
Bonus Step 7: If you’re religious…
If you are celebrating Advent and Christmas as Christians, rethink your Nativity set. I used to be like everyone else and set up the whole thing at once. Now, the Nativity is set up on the first Sunday of Advent with only the animals in it and the shepherd to the side watching his sheep.
On December 17, we start the O Antiphons and we set Mary, Joseph and the donkey out to start making their way toward the manger. Every day we move them a little closer.
On Christmas Eve, we add the Christ child and the angel, we bring the shepherd closer, and we start the three Magi on their journey toward the manger. Every day, the magi move a little closer.
Just making this one change when my kids were young really helped us to refocus on Advent and slow down the whole process of “rushing Christmas.”
Congrats! Now you’re counter cultural!
I hope you follow at least some of this advice so you can slow down and enjoy the holiday season. And if you do, guess what? You’ll get to be counter cultural too! Why? Because you won’t be part of the rat race dashing towards the imaginary finish line of December 25th. You’ll slow down and savor the season. You’ll probably spend less money and eat healthier too. That’s what we’ve experienced once we took the “rush” out of it.
We evolved to be seasonal beings. We have a need to be in tune with the light and the dark, but also with feasting and fasting. When we can celebrate the Christmas season slowly, with the anticipation ahead of time and the closure at the end of it, we can truly treat it as a special time. Then we return to ordinary time refreshed and renewed, not worn out and broke.
Doesn’t that sound better?? It is, I promise.
P.S. That photo? That’s the centerpiece we made this year for Christmas dinner. We have time to spend on it because we aren’t busy rushing around. It’s fun. 
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