Make Good Choices

What is an Authentic Christmas? It’s a celebration of Christ coming into the world as a light to cast out darkness. It’s baking candy cane cookies from your Grandma’s recipe. It’s decorating a tree and telling a story with each ornament. It’s a basket full of cards brimming with smiling faces and cute dogs. It’s a candlelit sanctuary filled with voices singing Silent Night. It’s visiting lonely folks at a nursing home with off-key carols and warm hugs. It’s quietly sitting in front of a lit tree and remembering all those years before and dreaming of all the years ahead. It’s a prayer over sleeping children pleading for peace on earth. It’s getting those cute boots you really, really wanted. It’s a little bit of everything, which is why Christmas is so darn fantastic...and completely overwhelming.

There’s a line from the late 80’s classic, Parenthood, which we’ve quoted forever. As their kids leave for school the un-cool parents yell out, “Make good choices!” Pre-kids, we said it as a funny inside joke. After kids, it became our mantra. While it still brings a smirk as we send our kids out the door, we hope it will be a foundational piece of wisdom for their life. We now live in a world that is all choices, all the time. You’ve got to be ready to do the work to make good ones.

Christmas season is inundated with choices. It is overflowing with choices, decisions, events, obligations, desires, opportunities and stress. You have to get in front of December and make a choice about what this holiday season is going to mean to your family. If you don’t make the decision, the season will. If you go with the frantic flow be prepared to find yourself face down in a platter of sugar cookies as you cry spiked eggnog tears and mourn another “empty” Christmas.

Authentic Christmas. Easier said than done. Over the next couple of weeks we're going to share a few starting points to help you find your way to a meaningful, memory-filled season. We’ve had good Christmases and bad ones. We’ve had years where I was a stay at home mom and a working mom. We’ve tried and failed and sometimes succeeded. We don’t have all the answers, but we’d love to have a conversation. Because how you shape your Christmas season can be a big step in how you shape your life.

Side note: I didn’t need the Facebook Quiz, “What Peanuts Character Are You?” to tell me that I’m hands-down Lucy (Mark is totally Schroeder-it was meant to be). All that I’m sharing here is from the heart and if it gets a little Lucy, just work with me. We're so far from the perfect family. However, this isn’t my first rodeo and I’ve learned a trick or two that I hope can help you, too. We're all so busy, I just want to give it to you straight and leave the glitter and sparkles for the tree.

In the next few posts we'll talk about the deeper matters of the season, but the first step before anything else is to get your act together. Let's call it my PLAN-PRIORITIZE-PREP-PLAY method.

STEP 1: PLAN

Right before or after Thanksgiving, plan a night with your spouse to figure out what your Christmas season is going to look like. Make it fun. Wait until after the kids go to bed, light a fire or some candles, find a Pandora Christmas station and pour a couple glasses of wine and get to work.

We always start with a blank calendar for December, first marking those firm dates (vacations, guests, special events) and then making a list of all the other stuff: family advent night (most of the time Sundays, but that doesn’t always happen), decorating the house, getting the tree, trimming the tree, going to see Christmas lights, parties, school events, shopping, date nights, wrapping gifts, baking and any other activities.

STEP 2: PRIORITIZE

Then you start making choices. What do we really want to do? How can we do it without going crazy? Is Christ present in our choices? What can we cut out? Will four nights out in a row make for really cranky kids? Cranky parents? How many nights do we want/need a sitter? Do we have any time carved out just for us as a couple? Do we have enough family time at home? Is there a balance of giving and receiving?

Most Decembers we end up with something on our calendar every day. But we try to balance “heavy-lifting” events with others that are easier. On these planning nights, we always end up having a good time. It’s fun to go down memory lane, share stories from our childhood Christmases and feel like we are starting out the season on the same page.

STEP 3: PREP

This leads to second part of the planning stage. I’ve only called it this in my head, so it seems kind of silly to write it down- but it’s my Christmas Ninja Mission. I take that calendar, my gift list, my to do list and make a big ol’ list of everything we need to make our season merry and bright— tape, wrapping paper and ribbon, gifts (more on that later), baking and craft supplies, teacher and hostess gifts, stamps for cards, candles and greenery, hot chocolate, marshmallows, extra wine and dark chocolate—(mama deserves some treats, too).

Depending on how ahead of the game I am that year, either the last weeks of November or the first of December I’m in full Christmas Ninja mode. I’m on a mission to get as many errands done as possible. I’m focused, my route is mapped out, I know what Amazon Prime can and cannot do for me, my lists are divided by store, my handbag is prepped with Marcona almonds and yes, a little chocolate, dinner is of the Rusty’s Pizza or Crockpot variety, and I leave the kids at home. Ninja go.

STEP 4: PLAY

I know that once my Christmas Ninja Mission is complete, I can move onto to my favorite part of the season- playtime.  We can bake cookies and not have to run to the store, I can watch Little Women or The Holiday for the 67^th time while wrapping gifts from my stocked stash, we can have a hot chocolate picnic under the Christmas tree, deliver cookies to our neighbors, make it a candlelit night with Bing Crosby, gather around our advent wreath each Sunday night, head out to the party hostess gift in hand…because it’s all ready to go.

A big part of enjoying the play phase is to please forget Pinterest, forget the Anthropologie catalog, forget your genetically engineered neighbor and play to your strengths. If you aren’t a baker, there is no shame in buying those cookies from the store. If you aren’t crafty, those sticker gift tags are just fine. If decorating is not your thing, put some fresh greenery on your mantel with white candles and call it a day (it will look beautiful by the way).

Maybe you’re outdoorsy- then forget the gingerbread men and take a nature walk with your kids. If you’re musical, make up funny words to Frosty the Snowman or head-up a group of carolers. Theatre major? Check out every Christmas book at the library and bring those stories to life.

Some of our favorite moments are just cuddling up watching a Christmas movie with popcorn sprinkled with M & M’s- that’s all I needed to do to win mom of the year. Oh, and put your phone down while you watch the movie.

All your kids really want is you. All you really want is your family. And we all want to make it matter, to find the heart of the season, to find the light that cast out all darkness. Make it happen.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be sharing here all different ways to live meaningfully and joyfully through the season. Spiritual, practical, creative and compassionate- simple ways to connect, give and grow as a family.

Let’s have a Merry Christmas.