A Simple Strategy for the Best Christmas EVER

So guess what?  The best Christmas EVER doesn’t happen by accident. But, I don’t think it is necessarily planned to the details either.  Contradictory?  Maybe, but I think the magic is somewhere in between.

Awhile back my husband came home with a random thought he had just heard on a radio program.  That’s right, brilliance straight from Sean Hannity today. 😉  Anyhow, his point was that many of life’s best moments are spontaneous or unplanned.

We’ve tested that out over the past couple months, mostly unintentionally but just keeping an eye out for it, and generally have found it to be true.  There is something magical that happens when things are unplanned.  Void of expectation and anticipation we are left to thoroughly appreciate the moment for what it is.

Having said that, you know by now that I’m a planner girl and I still believe that if you really want to get somewhere you need a plan as to how you are going do it.  Often it simply doesn’t happen on it’s own.

So as we look at this upcoming holiday season, my first suggestion is to think broad, not narrow.  Step back, while we still have plenty of time, look at the big picture of the season and choose three things that are most important to you.  What would you like to achieve or accomplish this season? What ideals would you like to uphold or focus on this year?  Maybe you want to establish more family traditions, maybe you want to focus on advent more, maybe you want more quiet nights with your family or more memories with friends, less rush, more fun, stay within your budget.  There are no wrong answers here, but over the next few days choose three general ideas you would like to characterize Christmas this year (and if you’re brave enough, share them in the comments.  I’d love to hear them!)

 

 

The next step is to decide how you are going to get there.  What type of events and activities will help you achieve those goals?  Don’t feel pressured to fill in all of the blanks right now, but the idea is to get your mind thinking in that direction.  If you have always wanted to have friends over for a  gingerbread house decorating party then that will take some planning.  Go there.  Hop on Pinterest, grab some library books and start planning.  If you would love to do advent devotions as a family this year, start researching books (Tip: my family favorites are coming in a post soon!).  Advent begins on November 29 this year so set a deadline to buy or borrow any books you might want to use.  Start working backward from your the three goals and start making daily decisions that will help get you there.
See how simple that is?  A little strategy to get you intentionally moving in the direction you want to go this year, while working to keep those expectations in check.  There are lots of ways to this right.

I didn’t come up with this on my own, friends, it’s straight from Lysa TerKeurst’s The Best Yes (which would be an awesome gift to yourself, by the way).  In her words, “a small no pushes through the resistance of awkwardness and disappointment because it’s better to nip something early on”.

Early on. Did you catch that?  That means now!

At the risk of being a Debbie Downer, I have the feeling that the Best Christmas EVER has more to do with saying no than it does with saying yes.  The holiday is fully marketed for us to say yes.  Stores are carefully laid out, commercials are artfully crafted, our mailboxes are flooded with images of sweet families in matching pajamas looking ridiculous happy because of their stuff, because they said yes.  We fall prey to it all so easily, but I am pretty certain real joy comes from being very careful what we say yes to.

The choices for your family, the ways you can celebrate, the memories you can make and gifts you can buy are literally going to be endless this season.  But in order to do this well we are going to say no to many “good” things so we can say yes to the best ones; the ones that lead us where we really want to go.  No, we may not attend every event.  No, we may not have a Pinterest worthy Christmas card (or maybe you will if that is one of your goals for this year!) but we are setting out to achieve our broad goals for this season by choosing the best yes that will get us there.

So as I told you before I’m not tossing out the tree.  We will most certainly be decking the halls here and I’m still a sucker for bright paper packages tied up in strings, but I also want to reign it in a little.  I’m thankful for the liberty to manage what Christmas looks like in my home so I will go about it intentionally, choosing three big themes for Christmas success and leaving plenty of room for the unplanned as well.  Are you ready?

My three look like this:

1.  Focus on advent. I’ve done this with the kids the past 4 years (some years better than others) and on my own, in the early morning hours, the past 2 years, which I have absolutely loved.  This is one way I help us all set our hearts and not get distracted by all things shiny this season.

2.  Focus on giving. I want to think of small ways to continually keep my kids focused on giving rather than getting this season.

3. Quiet nights.  This season is already shaping up to be busy for us – so many seemingly non-negotiables on the calendar – so from here on out I’m going to work on the power of the small no.  Saying no to good things so we have plenty of unscheduled evenings for games or books, driving to see the lights or making paper snowflakes together (more of those ideas, coming soon!).

That’s it, friends.  Just pulling out a little intentionality, a little strategy, to get us all off to a brave start.  If you already have an idea of what your three might be, I’d love to hear them.

 

Coming soon…thoughts on gifts, fun family traditions, ideas for advent and some of my favorite Christmas reads!