Preventing Holiday Stress

Autumn is here, and with it comes anticipation of the holiday season. Holidays often mean time with family and friends, expectations of gifts, and additional activities that can weigh down our already busy schedules. For many people, the holidays bring more stress than relaxation, and more disappointment than joy. Sound familiar???

This holiday season, you can take steps to prevent some of the difficulties you may have experienced during past holidays. For starters, decide what is important to you about the holidays and let that be your guide. If time with your children and extended family is important, there are many ways to create a meaningful holiday experience together that revolves around activities. This means changing the focus of the holidays from gift giving to other ways that love, care, and honoring of one another can be expressed. Sit down as a family and decide on a favorite activity or a new experience you can do together during the holiday season. If relaxation is important to you, create a new schedule in the house during school breaks that allows everyone some down time. Maybe this means that the kids help make dinner, clean up the living room, or rake leaves in the yard so you can read the newspaper or talk with a friend on the phone. Even chores can bring family members together, and the work goes more quickly when everyone helps.

Research shows that children really want and need four basic things during the holidays. These include relaxed and loving time with family, realistic expectations about gifts, an evenly paced holiday season, and strong family traditions. Decide what you can afford to spend on the holidays and discuss this with members of your household. It is important to help children create realistic holiday expectations about activities and gifts, rather than believe they will receive every toy or game they ask for. By working on this issue early in the holiday season, you can prevent hurt feelings and disappointment later. Some people find it helpful to sit down together and come up with ideas for family activities such as walks in the park, ice skating, or singing. Others choose to focus on creating family rituals such as decorating the home, telling or reading stories after dinner, making a special holiday treat from scratch, or playing group games.

Regardless of what you do this season, remember to pace yourself and your family. Get plenty of rest. Choose activities that you really want to do, and make time for them. Eat healthy food. Enjoy time with family and friends, and have a wonderful holiday!

 Some of the ideas presented in this article were extrapolated from Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guilde to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season by Jo Robinson & Jean C. Staeheli (1991).

A previous version of this article was published in The Voice.