Hope you enjoy my new column from this month’s Seattle’s Child. Would love to hear what traditions you’re starting with your family this year–big or small!
Last Christmas, my five-year-old had exactly three things on her list for Santa: a diary, a set of jacks, and a Pillow Pet.
I have to admit, that seemed a little skimpy to me. So throughout the coming weeks, I found myself offering suggestions and pointing out things in catalogs, trying to bulk up her order. Did she want a jewelry box? New slippers? A Barbie? Finally, a more experienced mom helped to snap me out of it. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “The day’s coming when you have to outbid everyone on eBay to get a specific-model-number Lego set, so enjoy the simplicity while it lasts.”
I did a very quick 180 that day, and it got me thinking about how I present the idea of the holidays to my kids. Suddenly, I saw what an opportunity I had in front of me. With a new or young family, Christmas is a clean slate. My five- and two-year-old girls, for example, had no lofty expectations of how many gifts they would receive, nor did they have set ideas of what our activities should be. They didn’t even know what Christmas dinner ought to be! What they were excited about was the ideaof Christmas – colored lights, time off from school, treats, the chance of snow, Santa on the roof. Did it matter to them whether their gifts totaled $30 or $300, whether we went to big-ticket performances or a neighborhood puppet show? Not in the slightest. It was up to me to show them what the holidays look like for our family.
It’s time to take advantage of this, people. For many of us, becoming parents means that for the first time, we get to start our own traditions in our own houses. Even if we’ve flown home to the east coast all of our lives, when babies come, we often get a free pass to nest with our own family and do our own thing. Finally, we can have lasagna and martinis for Christmas dinner if we want, and no one will be the wiser! We can watch Christmas Vacation instead of It’s a Wonderful Life! Halleluiah! It’s funny, then, how we often find ourselves simply repeating the familiar traditions we grew up with – even those we don’t like.
“The formal Christmas dinner was always stressful at my house, growing up,” shares a dad I know. “It was my least favorite thing as a kid. Yet somehow, I instigated it myself because it seemed like what I was supposed to do once I had a family.” After killing themselves by pulling this off with a newborn, the next year they started their own tradition: a self-serve potluck lunch and a batch of Bloody Marys, which allowed for more mingling and less prep and clean-up. It’s now a Christmas day tradition at their house, and their whole family loves it.
My advice to you this year is to take a moment to think about what memories are most meaningful for you and your partner, and to talk about what you want the holidays to be, for you and for your kids. You might settle on some small things, like a cookie-making party with your neighbors, or bigger ones, like working at a soup kitchen on Christmas Eve. The important thing is that you put intention behind it, and realize that you have a rare opportunity to start annual rituals that your kids will look forward to … at least until they have their own kids and decide to change everything.
Here are some ideas I’m working toward this year. I’d love to hear yours.
- Shop local – Hit our many wonderful craft fairs and neighborhood stores, and if it’s age-appropriate, involve your child in choosing gifts for others. It beats schlepping the kids to a big shopping center any day.
- Introduce charity – Involve your kids in the concept of giving, from picking a needy child’s name off a tree to weeding out toys to donate. A friend of mine takes her kids and their red wagon around her block every year to gather food bank donations from neighboring houses.
- Get together – Start simple, homespun traditions that gather friends or neighbors, like cookie decorating, making snowflakes for the windows, or having a progressive party.
- Get creative – Save money on wrap, cards, and décor by having your children decorate butcher paper with markers and glitter that you probably already have on hand. It’s an activity and a money-saver – plus your kids will be proud and the recipients charmed.
- Experience gifts – In lieu of an expensive present, choose a shared experience that involves time together, like a ski trip, a membership to the aquarium, or theater tickets.
It’s our daughter’s second Christmas and I’m trying to repeat what we did last year and aim for more of a Little House in the Big Woods style Christmas than a Victorian-1900′s-American Christmas. While you’re right that they don’t know the difference, I do. I didn’t expect it, but I spent most of the day feeling let-down just because it didn’t remind me of the Christmases of *my* youth. It surprised me, because a less-material Christmas is otherwise such a philosophically compatible idea to me. I’ll keep working on it. Below is an interview I saved from a magazine years ago (I’d just post a link, but can’t find it online. Sorry about the length of it).
Unplug The Christmas Machine: An Interview with the Authors from Family Fun Magazine
by Neligh Ust on Saturday, November 27, 2010 at 7:46pm
I have a friend who crafted lovely, all-but-baroque snow globes as Christmas gifts last year. She also decorated her house to the gills, sent out 150 homemade cards, pulled off a big holiday party, stenciled her own wrapping paper, and spent umpteen lunch hours shopping for everything from guinea pigs to small plastic Jar Jar Binks figures for her Star Wars-crazed sons.
Was it the Christmas of her dreams?
Here’s what she told me about that day: “I’d been staying up until midnight all December, trying to finish a million tasks, and was exhausted. The boys tore through my carefully chosen gifts in minutes and spent the day bickering over the Star Wars toys. For the first time in my life, I never got that great Christmas-glow feeling. I was trying so hard to deliver a warm and inviting holiday like the ones I remembered from childhood, but in fact I just worked myself into a frenzy. Somehow, Christmas had become a measure of my abilities as a mother, and I felt like a failure.”
Ok, maybe you’ve never actually made snow globes, but I’ll be you see something of yourself in my friend. I know I do. So in search of expert advice on making this year less stressful for all of us A-for-effort types, we interviewed Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli, the authors of Unplug The Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love & Joy Back into the Season. What follows are their tips on everything from reorienting gift giving to finding more time for the things you truly want to do this Christmas to not fall prey to the media’s messages.
Hmm. As part of that media, we’d better admit to a little irony here. Family Fun brims with holiday activities, yet this particular article seems to advocate cutting back on those very things. Conflicting signals? We hope not. The message of this piece is to prioritize, not eliminate. …
SIMPLIFYING THE HOLIDAYS
What’s the first step parents should take to simplify the holidays?
Jo: Decide what’s important to you. We’ve done hundreds of workshops, and it’s remarkable how the same scenario happens over and over again. We ask people to close their eyes and imagine a Christmas that would give them great pleasure. When they open their eyes, there is a profound silence. Everyone shares what they imagined, and it’s so similar from person to person: to be with your family, to be with your children, in a joyful way. To have no stress. To carry out the traditions that have meaning to you and your family. To connect to something that’s bigger than yourself. Oh, and of course, there’s snow! There’s a fire in the fireplace.
Jean: What’s most striking is that, in the fantasy, gifts would not be in the celebration! Or if there were gifts, they would be simple, lovingly chosen, or handmade, Nobody fantasized about going to the mall.
Ok, we know what people want, but that’s not what they actually get, is it? Gifts may be a low priority in the fantasy, but if you’ve got kids, it seems like Christmas can become solely about gifts. How can parents change this emphasis?
Jo: One year, Jean and I counted up the amount of money you’d spend to buy all the gifts advertised in one hour of Saturday morning cartoons. It was more than $400 worth of goods, paraded in front of a child with all the seductiveness that Madison Avenue can muster. So the first thing we advise is, with little kids, show them what a commercial is. It’s hard to decipher sometimes when the toy advertised is the same character they just saw on the show. Watch with them and have them cry out ‘commercial!’ every time one comes on. With older kids, talk through what the messages are all about, and how advertisers want you to think all your happiness is tied up in having that toy, but that lots of toys aren’t as great as they say. What you’re trying to do is channel all that excitement about Christmas gifts toward excitement about the rest of Christmas, like holiday activities and traditions.
That sounds good. But do kids really care as much about activities and traditions as their Christmas-gift list?
Jean: I think parents are afraid they aren’t going to do right by their kids. They want their kids to have happy memories, to be delighted and thrilled. Parents need to be reassured that they can provide this for their children in all sorts of ways, not just with gifts. You’d be surprised how simple a kid’s idea of tradition is. One of the moms we spoke to asked her four-year-old what he remembered about the previous Christmas. “The Santa on a string,” he said. She had no idea what he was talking about until she realized there was a simple Santa ornament that had hung on the tree last year, at her son’s eye level. That ornament meant nothing to her, but to him, it meant Christmas.
CREATING FAMILY TRADITIONS
Are you saying that traditions can actually substitute for gifts? Or that, by adding activities and traditions, parents can cut down on the gifts?
Jean: I think a lot of parents who want to simplify Christmas go about it the wrong way. They try to take away the gifts, the commercialism, without making sure they have already put in place those things that are important. You don’t want a feeling of absence, but a feeling of shifting the emphasis.
Jo: Also, remember that gift obsession is just a phase in a child’s life, especially kids ages eight to twelve, especially in boys. You’re not to blame, he’s not to blame. Sit down with him and say, “I see you’ve made this long list of things you’d like. In our family, we only give X number of presents, so let’s figure out which ones you really want.” Then, in the coming years, gradually cut down on the gifts as you build up the activities and traditions.
How do you make that shift toward more activities and traditions?
Jo: One of the best ways is to make a Christmas calendar. As a family, write down the commitments you have already. Then see where the voids are and decide if and how you’d like to fill those voids. Everyone should have a say. You may plan days to do nothing. Reframe things you view as chores, like picking out a tree, and turn them into traditions. How? Allow time for the activity. Don’t just make it one of several tasks to check off your list. Do the activity with spirit and have a good time. In my family, we’ve turned getting a wreath into a tradition. We set aside an afternoon, go into the woods and gather boughs, and enjoy being outdoors with each other, in the moment.
Jean: One family we spoke with decides what they’d all like to do in December. They choose a date to pick a tree and draw a picture of a tree on the space in the calendar, for example. Another family designates each day as something special: from Kids Choose the Menu Day to Hear a Story as Many Times as You Want Day.
OVERCOMING HOLIDAY PRESSURE
Although the calendar is meant to help avoid over-scheduling and missing out on what they really want from the season, it leads to a discussion about moms going overboard. Let me quote from your book: ‘Busy women feel pressured to put on a year-end extravaganza and are given the hidden message that their families’ happiness depends on their nonstop performance.’ What’s the source of all that pressure?
Jo: It’s partly because today’s women were often raised by mothers who didn’t work outside the home, and so the domestic arts were important to their identity. Women carry this legacy that the family celebration rests on their shoulders. And of course, the media puts pressure on women too. I mean, look at the holiday issues of most women’s magazines, full of crafts and foods and decorating, all promising us the magical Christmas we can give our families if only we work hard enough. One of the moms we mention in the book said she used to feel like a bad mother unless she made something from the magazines every Christmas.
But if you go to this extraordinary effort, what kind of mom and wife does your family get at Christmas? They get someone who’s distracted and pressured. Think about that from a child’s point of view
Now, women may go overboard, you say in your book, but men often do much less. What’s that about?
Jean: What we found out in our workshops was this: Women assume the way to make Christmas better for their husbands is not to ask them too much, not to involve them too much. That has the effect of making men feel alienated. Because they have no stake in Christmas, they have no enthusiasm for it.
Jo: There’s resentment on both sides. The men are saying ‘This is not my Christmas’ and ‘My wife is out of control.’ The women are saying, ‘How come you aren’t helping with my Christmas? And how come you don’t have any Christmas spirit?’
Jean: One of the most dramatic moments in the workshop is when we ask women, ‘Do you know what traditions are important to your husband?’ We ask, for example, if they know if in his boyhood he opened his gifts on Christmas morning or Christmas Eve. Everyone sheepishly looks at each other. All of a sudden, most women realize they don’t know anything about how their husband celebrated Christmas as a child, or what’s important to him about the holiday.
So how do you create family holiday traditions that take into account what everyone wants?
Jean: You ask! We’ve mentioned finding out about your husband’s childhood traditions. Ask you kids what they remember most about Christmas in years past. It may surprise you. Often it’s something small.
Jo: For instance, I bet my mother never knew that one of the most important things to me as a kid was that we had a fruitcake recipe from a neighbor, and Mom would let me and my little sister cook this all by ourselves. We’d always do this in an aluminum pan, mush everything, and eat the gumdrops. Well, my mom died not too long ago, and when we requested things from the estate, my sister requested the aluminum dish, and I requested the recipe box. Who would have thought one of the most indelible memories would have been cooking a fruitcake? My sister and I still get together and bake that cake, even though we don’t really like it!
And we can’t overlook how financially stretched many parents feel at this time of year. How do you address this?
Jo: Parents need to come up with a family plan and decide what gets priority. Is it decorating the house? Having parties? Buying gifts? Problems arise when there’s no communication, when you haven’t agreed on something that represents both of you. Plus, people forget the incidental costs. When you make a budget, remember wrapping paper and the fact that you want to steam-clean the carpets before relatives arrive. Be comprehensive and figure out what areas you feel comfortable cutting back on.
Jean: I remember one women in our workshop who confessed that she took to hiding the Visa bill in January and February and only told her husband about it in March or April, when she could no longer put off the inevitable. There are also women who say their husbands have no idea what it costs to entertain. “He wonders why our grocery bill was so high in December, but we hosted three family dinners,” said one. If you don’t share your memories and do some planning based on your values, then the commercial celebration will come in and fill the void. And the commercial celebration has the ulterior motive of getting you to spend.
GETTING YOUR FAMILY EXCITED ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS
What’s your closing advice for getting one’s families excited about holiday traditions and preparation?
Jo: Involve the kids, because that’s what they really want, and it’s these times and not the gifts that will stick in their minds. What works best, it seems, is to point them toward what they naturally gravitate towards. Don’t force them to do what they don’t like. More kids like helping with baking than shopping, for instance. Also, relax your standards. If you decide to make baking cookies a tradition, for instance, know that the kids will mess up the kitchen and get flour all over themselves, and that’s ok. If you must do Martha Stewart stuff and make it picture-perfect, do it late at night, by yourself!
Jean: It’s not so much what you do, but more that these are special things you don’t do the rest of the year. The point is that they happen at a comfortable rhythm that a child can look forward to, and that you as parents bring your whole selves to it because you aren’t distracted by being overburdened and spending too much money.
Jo: One tradition that felt right in my own family was to take donations to the Salvation Army. My son saw firsthand that charity was something we did at Christmastime. It was palpable. He helped bring the bags in, which makes a bigger impact than watching us write a check and stuff it in an envelope.
Jean: I’m going to tell you a secret about our book. Yes, we’re talking about Christmas and how to make it feel right for your family. But what we are really talking about is: Who are you? What are your values? Talking about Christmas is an entree to talking about all these profound issues. Our approach gives people a way to wrestle with these issues and hopefully come to terms with them.
I don’t know if you can edit it, but the byline is wrong (leftover from a facebook copy-and-paste), just so you know.
Thanks so much for sharing! I enjoyed your insightful comments and the article, too.