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Dashing through the snow,
With a list that seems to grow.
Down the road we speed.
Hurry! Get what we need.
First, there is all the food.
Then, décor to set the mood.
Make sure everybody has a gift
Or someone will be miffed.

Jingle bells! Jingle bells!
Just get out of my way.
There is so much I must do.
It’s the holiday!

This used to be my holiday song.  As I recall, a hamster sang it.  It was on a rodent workout DVD called

The Wheel Thing.   

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Then, one year I said, “Enough!” 

In the years that followed I said, “More than enough!”

That is when I put together my list.  I decided what I was and was not going to do.

Decide which traditions are important.  Keep those. Drop or modify the others.  

Let’s say, baking cookies is something that is done every year.  Do they have to be made from scratch or would it be acceptable if frozen dough or cookie mix was used.  Or, could you just make your “special” cookies and skip the rest this year.  Could the holiday card and gift list be trimmed?   Suggest to the people being dropped that the amount of money that would have been spent go to a favorite charity.   For those people that must receive holiday cards, try sending e-cards.  Shop online for all your gifts, have them wrapped and shipped directly to the recipient.  Even if the people getting the gifts are in your house, doesn’t the idea of shopping in loungewear, while sipping your favorite beverage, with no crowds, and nothing to carry, load and unload make the whole thing worth it?

Get everyone to pitch in and share the work. 

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This could be each family brings a side dish or dessert and the host family makes the turkey for the holiday meal.   Or each family member cleans and decorates a room or section of the house and then at the end everybody gets together and decorates the tree. 

Trade jobs with some one else. 

If there is some aspect of the holidays that you really enjoy or at which you are talented, see if there is somebody you know that might have a different preference or talent and trade jobs.  For instance, if you really enjoy shopping but wish you could leave the decorating to someone else; it just might be that your neighbor who spends all day Black Friday creating the brighter than daylight, fully animated, winter fantasyland in his yard would be happy to line your walkway with candy canes and throw some lights over the bushes in your yard on Saturday if you would do his shopping.  After all, you will be at Wal*Mart at 4:00am anyway.

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