I HAD A conversation with my youngest daughter in the car this week about Christmas. She was saying how excited she was and going through her favourite parts; the decorations, baking cookies, watching movies with snacks, Elf on the Shelf and most importantly of all, the presents!
And listen, if I woke up each day to a clean and decorated house, ingredients for baking already prepped in a fridge stocked with Christmassy treats, presents bought and family days out arranged, I’m sure I would find the whole thing pretty magical too! But I don’t.
Like all other parents this time of year, I am responsible for the magic. And while she was listing off her favourite things, I was mentally adding all of these things to (yet another) checklist and trying to regulate my nervous system.
Then she asked me what my favourite part was, and not only do I not have one, I absolutely dread the next few weeks and can’t wait for it to be over. I look forward to the days after Christmas, when all of the things have been bought, cooked, baked, attended and given, and I can finally take a breath and relax. And isn’t that awful! It hit me like a brick to Marv’s face, that I am becoming The Grinch, and every other cranky adult from the movies I grew up watching, where they are too busy to enjoy anything.
This is not what I want, and yet, I am not alone in feeling this way, with research showing that people feel their health takes a nosedive for the season, and that it can be as stressful as major life events like changing jobs or moving house.
Every single year, I wake up on the 24th or 25th of December with a wretched cold that lingers into the New Year. My immune system takes an awful battering in the weeks leading up to the big day, there is so much racing around and endless jobs to be done.
I don’t look after myself, I don’t have time to, and the workload crushes me until I break.
So this year I’ve decided to beat the system and have planned to have everything finished and boxed off by mid-December, therefore freeing myself to relax and enjoy the coming weeks. This means I have had to go into turbo mode and try to fit an ungodly amount of tasks in on top of all of my normal duties. Which leaves me going 90 miles an hour, not enjoying anything because I am always thinking of the next chore, and making myself miserable.
I have been racing around from task to task, constantly on the move and not actually experiencing anything. If we have tried to sit down to watch a Christmas movie as a family, I have found myself scrolling through my phone at the same time, sourcing presents and checking delivery times. I have been scratching my head as I look at Advent calendars and wonder why they are offered as either €5 chocolate ones, or €290 beauty ones with nothing in between.
I am looking at Christmas Day outfits, and coordinating schedules to fit in Santa Visits, or trips to places we have already visited this year, but that now cost €90 for the four of us (I mean, how?) because they’ve added Christmas lights to some trees.
I have been wondering how we will attend the 87 school events that are all scheduled to happen at noon. And don’t even get me started on the 187 WhatsApp messages about said school events. I have been wondering if we need Christmas Eve pyjamas, Christmas Cards that will likely sit in a drawer until June, an ice-skating day out with hot chocolates that cost €9 each or a weekend break to a European City Christmas Market.
This has lead me into a heightened state of stress and when I’m in that state, while rushing around, trying to fit everything in, I do lose touch with reality. I will see other people’s days out on social media, and instantly feel like I’m not doing enough. I feel that my kids might not be able to enjoy Christmas without matching pyjamas, or hugely expensive gifts, or a Christmas Market. And that is madness. We don’t actually need any of this. And definitely not at a time when parents are already experiencing higher levels of stress and burnout than before as we try too hard to do too much.
But the problem is that I have to slow down before I can see sense, and if I slow down, I won’t get to everything on my list (which I am fairly certain is longer than Santa’s). I have made huge efforts this year to be ‘that organised mother’ so that I can eventually slow down and enjoy the simple moments in life.
I do understand why I’m putting myself under so much pressure. We finally bought a house back in February, after a tough few years, and I have been painstakingly trying to coax my nervous system out of ‘Fight or Flight’ ever since. It is a long process and mostly involves me trying to slow down, not do as much, and enjoy what we have, as we were years fighting for this. There were literal years when I dreamed about sitting around our own table for dinner, folding laundry on a peaceful afternoon, or even just raking the leaves in our very own garden!
Experiencing our first Christmas in our new house has felt entirely out of reach at times over the past few years, and now that it’s actually here, I don’t want to waste this time thinking about ‘more’ or ‘next’.
I don’t want to spend the season working through a never-ending to-do list. I don’t want to feel like I’m not doing enough, or that it isn’t magical enough. My kids don’t want me to be irritated and overwhelmed for the next month. They can’t relax and enjoy if I am a ball of stress. I hate that I keep defaulting back to turbo mode rather than rejecting everything that makes me feel less than enough. I am sick of not enjoying these important days.
My kids need me to be stable and calm. And it is our presence over the coming weeks that makes the season magical, not the presents. I want to enjoy Christmas without having to sacrifice my mental, physical or financial health for it.
So for the next few weeks, I am taking everything non-essential off the to-do list. And for the rest of it, maybe I will get to it, and maybe I won’t. If I do get to it, I’ll do the job slowly, mindfully, and gratefully. I won’t leave sense at home and get swept along by silly season. And finally, I am going to keep reminding myself that we have everything we need already and that trying to do it all makes me (and everyone around me) miserable.
Margaret Lynch is a mother of two in Kildare.
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