6 Tips to Slow Down and Really Enjoy Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, but with all the activities and commercialization and yes, even family stress, it can easily become anything but that. Here are some tips to help you slow down for Christmas and really enjoy the season for what it's meant to be.

“It's the most wonderful time of the year….”

So goes the song.  But for many people this can be the most lonely time of the year, or the most frantic.  And if you're frazzled, it's hard to really enjoy much of anything, let alone Christmas.

There are a lot of reasons why the real meaning of Christmas can get lost. Things like:

• too many Christmas activities
• the hustle of so many presents and stocking stuffers to buy
• decorating pressure including lights, the Christmas tree, stockings, and more
• hustle in the streets and on the internet as retailers make offers that make us feel we have to advantage of right now or otherwise we'll miss out.

Some people have other things going on in addition to these typical distractions, such as professional demands. My husband, for example, is a college professor, so Christmas comes just after finals and all the grading that goes along with it. Talk about hectic! If you work in retail, you know what I'm talking about!

The Real Meaning of Christmas

But the real meaning of Christmas really can't be said any better than it was by Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas as he quoted from Luke 2:8-14.

What we truly are celebrating is that Jesus Christ came for us as a man to pay for our sins and to walk with us on this crazy and sometimes very difficult road of life.

A Physical Reminder—In Lights

One Sunday night our church small group met for a Christmas party. As we pulled up to park our car across the street from the host's home, we saw a beautiful sight greeting us.  Above the garage we saw this…

I love Christmas lights, but this was really something.

This is what greeted us as we pulled into our hosts' driveway.

We commented on the lights to the host as we entered his home, and he said that there'd been a lot of comments about his lights in years past.   He then told us about this particular comment.

A neighbor was coming home after his wife's passing during the Christmas season.  He came up to our host on the sidewalk after seeing the lights, and said that he'd driven home and seen the lights –  “Emmanuel / God With Us”–and that he then knew that it was going to be alright.

Not perfect, but alright.

We all need to slow down and think about what this season is all about.

Here are a few things that I think we've done well to slow down a bit.  Note, I said “well”–not “perfect.”

I hope they give you some ideas for slowing down this Christmas season.

6 Ways to Slow Down and Really Enjoy Christmas

Limit Gift Giving

I love presents, both giving them and getting them.  But a number of years ago I heard someone say that a good thing to aim for is to give only three gifts to each child .  The reasoning behind this is pretty obvious….if three gifts were enough for Jesus, then shouldn't they be enough for us?

Of course, this shouldn't be another legalistic rule.  We've done the “three gift thing” for a number of years now, but I've still put a few extra presents in each of our boys' stockings, and some years we've gifted more than three presents.

The point here is we don't need huge piles of gifts under the tree for each person in order to celebrate Christmas.  The more gifts there are, it seems the more distracting the gift giving becomes to everyone.

Celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas

In some ways the hype of Christmas morning is really exciting.  Kids wake up at 5 am and parents stumble out of bed after staying up until 3 am wrapping gifts.

Well, the adrenaline wears out pretty quickly and soon everyone is hankering for a nap or a lot of chocolate in order to make it through the day (sounds like a recipe for adrenal fatigue).

What we have done in our home is spread Christmas out.  Sometimes waaay out.

We typically don't have the kids open a gift on Christmas Eve because it seems to rev them up to wake up early the next morning.  In fact, things have become so low key about presents in our household that this past year, our youngest didn't even know that it was Christmas until around noon!  That's because we just each open one gift each day, starting on Christmas.

This really has helped us tone down the frenzy and the after-Christmas let down.

Mom isn't up until all hours of the morning wrapping gifts, which is great. Let's face it: if you haven't found a few things that you were hoping to get, then you can still buy and wrap them even a day or two after Christmas.

Doing things this way, you can even take advantage of the after Christmas sales!

In this post about healthy stocking stuffers I share how we've used advent and some mini stockings to really stretch out the

Have a Birthday Cake for Jesus

Probably no explanation is needed here.  And again, don't feel that you need to do this.  I used to bake homemade cinnamon rolls, a cake for Jesus, a number of homemade pumpkin pies with whole grain crust for the family, and everything at our dinner was homemade and as healthy as possible. Well, reality has set in and I just can't handle all of that anymore.

For example, Jesus can have a cake two days after Christmas, and we don't need cinnamon rolls. These Cinnamon Roll Cookies will do just fine or even easy peasy Baked Oatmeal.

Reach Out

Find someone who needs to be reached out to: an elderly neighbor, a lonely college student, a family from out of town, or folks whom you wouldn't normally reach out to. You can either just connect to show love, or you could invite them to do something with you.

Even if they already have plans, they'll be thankful that you thought of them.

Do Advent Reading and/or a Jesse Tree

We aren't always on time with our Advent readings, but even if we have to go back and make up missed days, it's still a good thing. 

We'd love to do Jesse Tree readings as well.

Anything that brings the true meaning of the season into your home is a good thing, as long as it isn't causing a bunch of stress and more deadlines.

The Joy of Advent is an AMAZING advent book that's literally written by real friends of mine. I mean real. I know their kids and everything.

Put Up Your Own “Emmanuel/God With Us” Lights

So this is a bit extreme, but hey; why not!

Every time you pull into your driveway, you'll know that everything is going to be alright. Not perfect, but alright. Maybe I need a string of these lights hanging over my kitchen sink so I can think about this all year round.

Do you have a tip for slowing down at this busy time of year?