Christmas can be a challenging time of year. Rather than being a joyful time with all the family gathered, holding pleasant conversation, laughing and enjoying themselves, it can be fraught with unspoken tension, overwhelmed children and the stress of providing a restaurant-quality meal on a tight budget.
As with most big events in life, having realistic expectations can really help you cope with mishaps and mayhem on the day. Releasing the ideal of a picture-perfect event will help you take things as they come.
Making choices based upon your values reduces decision fatigue and ensures that the things that are most important to you, happen.
Do you value family time? If so, having as many people from your family present might be your goal. This value will inform where you meet, what you do when you’re together and how long people will need to attend. For example, if you have family scattered near and far, they will need to be given plenty of advance warning of your plans so that they can make celebrating together a priority. If it is very important to you to have an elderly member of the family in attendance, you will need to take their needs into account when thinking about where you’ll meet.
Being clear on what you are hoping to achieve and communicating it to others involved will reduce misunderstandings. If you are hoping to give your young children the best Christmas they’ve ever had, you may have set the barre too high. Such a broad, undefined ideal is unlikely to happen, and how will you know if you’ve achieved it?
Realistic expectations will help everyone be more relaxed on the day. Perhaps some people from your family can’t attend this year. Although quality family time is a value of yours, fulfilling that may not always be possible. Things happen, people get sick, it’s the other side of the family’s turn to host, or the logistics are insurmountable this year. That’s ok. Try not to take these circumstances as personal attacks on you.
Financial stress at Christmas is very real for a large proportion of people. Our society places pressure on us to create lasting memories at Christmas time, and then provides the means to achieve that by providing expensive things to purchase. Having realistic expectations around finances will help you identify your spending priorities. There are plenty of blog posts about budget-friendly Christmas gifts, food and décor. Start a conversation with the other people in your family so that everyone is on the same page with how much to spend on gifts.
Identifying your values and setting realistic expectations will take a lot of stress out of your Christmas celebrations. Your values will help you decide what you’d like to happen and your expectations will inform how you respond to events throughout the day. Will everyone look like they’re in a TV commercial for a supermarket with Curtis Stone and a table laden with exquisite food? Probably not. Will there be a crying child, misunderstandings and a family member who arrives late? Probably, yes. However, if you can anticipate what might happen, you can be more flexible in your response which will make for a more enjoyable day.
