A Simple Season: Stopping the Christmas Morning Crazy {Series}

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A Simple Season: Tips for Keeping the Heart of the Holidays

Part Four: Stopping the Christmas Morning Crazy

SS4Anyone else long for the Christmas morning in the Folgers commercial? The leisurely wake up, the aroma of coffee, snuggly pajamas, homemade cinnamon rolls baking in the oven? Sign me up!

You see, at this stage of the game, Christmas doesn’t look quite like that. The kiddos will be up at the crack of dawn (5 is the new 6, didn’t you know?), we’ll hustle to get ready and open the few gifts we give them at home before heading to my parents’ house for breakfast and presents there. We’ll hustle to unwrap, clean up, and change before heading to my grandparents for a hustled lunch and presents there – and believe it or not, we used to hustle to ANOTHER Christmas celebration after that. If your Christmas Day resembles mine you probably return home only to drop everything on the first horizontal surface you can find and fall into bed without removing your makeup (or your pants).

So how do we change it? There are lots of ways to calm the crazy here, but most are painfully difficult (think calling Grandma and telling her you aren’t coming). And so, I propose another approach: what if we made calm IN the crazy?

Here are a few practical ideas…

1. Early delivery. If you live close to the other places you are celebrating, swing your gifts, cookies, etc. by before the big day. Less to carry in = less to stress over.
2. Reusable bags. Use them to bring and take your gifts. As you unwrap stocking stuffers and small gifts, load them up into the bags. For extra points, tag the bags with the location the contents will eventually go (like parents, kids, basement, etc.) so unloading is easy.
3. Play, stay, or away. As gifts are opened decide if kiddos can “play” right away (I recommend things that don’t require batteries or assembly), if they might “stay” where they are, like maybe Grandpa and Grandma are willing to keep the gift at their house awhile (I recommend loud toys and anything musical in nature), or if they’ll go “away” for later (I pull out one or two new gifts every few weeks and store the rest).

Great. You’ve got the “stuff” under control, but what about your mind? Your heart? Your soul? How do we ensure that we don’t miss Christmas for the crazy? Efl-da with Baby Jesus

Do the stuff that matters first. For us, this looks like reading the Christmas story and the kids opening a small box that contains the baby Jesus that will finally be placed in our manger before anything else. In fact, our Elf (we call him Elf-da) brought the small present with him December 1, and it’s been high on a shelf waiting to be opened since – the anticipation is killing the kiddos.

Make real hot chocolate. This might seem silly, but there’s something about making real hot chocolate (with milk and vanilla). It might be the smell, or the warmth, the fact that you instinctively hold the cup with two hands, or maybe it’s that it’s nearly impossible to drink it in a hurry. It requires that you slow down, waaaaay down to enjoy the moment, to breath it all in.

Sit on the floor. Instead of watching the day play out in front of you, get low, get down into the mess (like the King of the Universe in a stinky stable). The other great thing about the floor is that you get to see your kids eyes, straight on. Remember when Christmas used to feel that way?

Play with the Nativity. Yep, you read that right. Let the kids hold the pieces and identify the characters in the story. We like to “walk” Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the wisemen to the manger in the week leading up to Christmas. It breathes life into the story; it takes it off the pages, out of the pictures and into your living room where it can seep into your soul. If your Nativity is breakable, get a plastic one, or get over it – broken pieces (and broken people) are the best ones anyway because they come with the best stories.

I don’t know about you, but none of my babies came in silence, and I’m not sure Jesus did either. I think his mama was scared to death, and in a lot of pain. I think his dad was a nervous wreck. I think there were loud, stinky barn animals in the gallery. I think guests that came over the next many days were likely a surprise and could even have over-stayed their welcome. I think it was messy, I think it was loud, I think it sounds just like Christmas – and in the middle of all of it was a tiny perfect baby who would someday save the world.

So maybe we need to change our expectations and acknowledge that Christmas is crazy, was crazy, and probably always will be crazy.  Our task is to look for the stuff that matters…to see excitement instead of impatience, hear joy instead of ear-piercing squeals, see blessings instead of bags full of burdens, and feel valued instead of exhausted. Once we put on the glasses that allow us to see past the busy, past the stuff, and past the mess we’ll see what’s really there: love.  Unfiltered, loud, messy, over-the-top, unexplainable, crazy love.

To read more in Casey’s series on creating a “simple season”, click HERE.

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