Slow down

And now we're for it, rushing helter-skelter head-over-heels into Christmas as if there were no tomorrow, or Friday or Saturday for that matter. Things were progressing in a fairly orderly fashion until suddenly the last weekend before was gone and there's no stopping it now. We haven't been to a carol concert or seen The Nutcracker or put up lights outside the house (not for want of trying, but for want of sockets in the right places) but now it's follow-through-or-bust time for everyone with all those little plans of things you thought would be nice to do or make or give, and we're rapidly coming to the day when we'll all throw up our hands and wish Christmas had never been invented because it does nothing but stress everyone out and cause massive rifts in families that were otherwise happily chugging along in mutual indifference but have now been thrown together and ordered to be not just civil but extra nice to each other because of the season that's in it, and sometimes that's just too much for anyone to handle.

Things would go so much more smoothly if we could just hunker down and get through the darkest time of the year without this annual requirement to decorate, to shop, to spend, to wrap, to give, to recieve, to entertain, to cook to bake to mull to spike to sprinkle to keep up.

You don't have to keep up. Nobody is making you do this. Nobody except your mother, your husband, your in-laws, your children, their friends, the economy, and the media. Stop. Breathe. Revise your plans. Do the least you can get away with. Do less than that, because your harshest judge is yourself and everyone else is too busy wondering how much they have to do and what they can get away without doing. Give yourself permission to take something off your to-do list. Simplify. Delegate. Outsource.

See the people you like. Give presents to your friends, if you want to. Dress up if it's fun to dress up. Bake if you like to bake. Make your children happy by sitting on the floor to play a game. Make one fewer side dish.

Give yourself a break. It's Christmas, after all.