Hey! Isn’t it great to know that everything you do is watched by people who file every little thing away in their huge complicated computers?

And no, I’m not talking about these annoying people who make studies that blame all our kids’ problems on the parents. No, I’m talking about your kids. Our kids, because we all have the same situation: kids pick up on what we are feeling in everything we do and are affected by it.

Hmm, I’m not sure why this is exactly news. After all, you’re affected by how people around you feel, right? So of course kids are. And the stress that comes around this time of year, they feel that too. 

Me, I feel some weird internal pressure to create an event this time of year that everyone will be happy with, to create magic for my kids, so I worry about anal little things like which wrapping paper to use on certain packages, and whether Santa’s handwriting should look a whole lot different from mine, and where the hell is Santa going to find the SAME little chocolate Santas to hide them around the house for the kids to find, and, and, and….  And I realize that this is wholly an internal pressure and likely the kids don’t care that much, but on the other hand, kids are tied to and grounded by family traditions, samenesses they can count on from year to year, and frankly there’s already a whole lot of upheaval in their lives as it is so I’m reluctant to let go of those traditions just yet, but managing them is, you know, stressful.

And kids feel that.

Obviously, there can be tradeoffs. And it’s not like I go to the crazy lengths that I hear of some families doing, either (“Reindeer tracsks! On the roof! C’mon kids, let’s go look!”), but on the whole I like to think more about time spent together and less about things that don’t matter that much, like which cookies we make. Or even if we make them at all.

So if you’re looking to create a holiday that’s less about stress and more about your family, there are some ideas here. The ones I like were these:

1. Find out what aspects of past holidays your kids liked best. The things they think of as important may not be what you thought.

2. Let the kids do more of the work. Oh, I am so on this one. If they want cookies? They’ll have to make them.

3. Be sure to get outside a bit. Excellent idea; we forget that in colder weather. Bundle ‘em up and shove ‘em out the door.

So, what do you think? What have you backed off on, in the interest of preserving your holiday sanity? Or do you go all-out?

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