5 Things I Can't Be Arsed With At Christmas
Making your christmas a simple, seasonal celebration
Christmas is that time of year when we pile SOOOO much pressure on ourselves for everything to be *perrrrrfect*.
We overthink… what other people will think. 🙄
We feel the pressure to have a INSTAGRAM-ABLE day.
And when it’s just ONE day in every 365 days…
… that’s alodda pressure.
I used to be the person putting together a Christmas day itinerary… and then internally seething when no one stuck to it! 🙈
Then I did… THERAPY. 👀
And realised my *attempts* to plan out every-little-thing, was just me striving to create a sense of… control.
I also realised my over-loaded Christmas to-do list was the product of years of conditioning that told me… it’s a woman’s job to make Christmas perfect, but not for yourself, for everyone else.
Unpicking all of this CRAAAAP (it’s an on-going, non-linear process) has enabled me to let go of alodda Christmas ‘shoulds’ that until recently only drained my battery.
In my now never-ending pursuit to simplify and calm-ify my life, I’ve released a whole ton of Christmas-related-pressure, Including…
1 | Gifts
Gift giving is NOT my love language.
The stress of finding the ‘perfect’ gift.
The 😬 feeling when you tot up how much you’ve spent.
The guilt associated with buying stuff that’s perhaps not having the best impact on our planet 🤎🌍
I’ve let-that-shit-go!
I now send a message to family and friends around November time to say something along the lines of…
Heyyy. Just my annual reminder NOT to get me anything for Christmas. I’m not buying gifts this year either, let’s go to the pub for a hearty roast instead?
Sure - I still feel a pang of guilt.
I still worry people will think it’s rude, I’m the grinch, or try analyse what happened in her childhood to make her so miserable?
But the truth is, the weight lifted as a result of not buying, wrapping, posting, choosing and stressing over gifts outweighs the the other option - people pleasing.
*I will say - I do still get a gift for my husband. Much to my annoyance, he’s a gift guy.
2 | Any responsibility for my husband’s family’s gifts.
As mentioned, my husband is a gift guy.
His mission in life is to give gifts, and write birthday and Christmas cards that are, as he calls them ‘the ULTIMATE cry-trap’.
A cry trap is a highly emotional gift, or greetings card message that makes the recipient cry as a result of the overwhelming emotion.
Despite his joy in making people cry… he’s not always great at remembering birthdays…
I’ve always been very clear it’s NOT my job to organise his family’s gifts. And I am not responsible for remembering birthdays and other significant dates.
If he forgets his dad’s birthday (it’s happened twice - bad son) that’s on him.
When I hear my friends complaining about having to buy gifts for all of their partner’s family - I feel angry for them. Why is it so often the woman’s job in heterosexual relationships?!
📣 PSA: Grown MEN have the ability to buy gifts.
3 | Faffy Christmas Decorations
It’s allllll fun and games when you’re putting the Christmas decorations up. But who does it fall to when it comes to the boring bit - taking them down?
I am someone who wants to rip all of the Christmas decorations down on NYE to create a fresh-slate, clean and clear feeling for the New Year.
If that blanc-canvas feeling for the New Year is something ONLY I desire - I’ve got to consider this with the Christmas decs.
For a few years we haven’t bothered with Christmas tree decorations, purely because they are a faff to take down. And I like the tree just with glittering lights.
I also used to hang glitter-coated pinecones on ribbons in our windows. It looked cute, but the pain in pulling drawing pins out of the wooden curtain rail soon put an end to that.
4 | Christmas cards
I know they’re nice to send and receive, but honestly… I can’t be arsed.
‘nough said.
I’ll stick to exchanging podcast-length voice notes with my besties thanx. 🫠
5 | The frantic Christmas clean
When I was young, my grandparents would come over for Christmas.
I would be SOOOO excited for them to arrive, asking my mum when they were due to get there every 20-minutes.
My mum meanwhile ran about the house cleaning like a mad woman. Scrubbing until our home sparkled.
No one ever mentioned it. Truthfully I don’t think anyone even noticed. But for some reason she felt it was something she had to do.
Fast forward a few years and I realised she’d passed the baton onto me. There I was scrubbing and cleaning before the in-laws arrived.
NOPE. Not any more.
The shift has come in two parts:
A: My husband and I now always clean together. If I find myself cleaning on my own my blood quickly boils.
B: I’ve had to learn to stop caring so much if there’s a dusty windowsill, or the kitchen looks like a bomb hit it. Guests don’t even notice these things - and if they do, they’re the wrong guests.
My therapist once said to me “next time your in-laws are over, could you just get a take away?” Mind blown. And as I thought about it I realised they’d probably love that.
Permission slip granted.
It’s important to remember that the right guests don’t really care about how clean your house is, or how long you slow-cooked that beef ragu for. They just want to hang out.
3 Things I *CAN* Be Arsed With This Christmas...
1 | A real Christmas tree
I will never understand plastic plants - and that extends to Christmas trees.
We can all agree we think nature is beautiful. We want it in our homes.
So we reinvent it in plastic form? In a form that will at some point end up in a hole in the ground and take millennia to break down? I don’t get it!
I’m team real tree all the way. I love the pine scent and the glittering lights.
But in true anti-Christmas-pressure fashion, I just leave it with the lights only - no decorations. Makes it so much quicker to take down after the big day.
2 | Christmas dinner
A good Christmas dinner is everything. Crispy roast potatoes. Prawn cocktail starter (a 70s-vibe tradition in our house), and sprouts. I loooove sprouts.
3 | Christmas cheese board
Christmas isn’t Christmas if there isn’t a bottle or red and a Mont D’or warming by the fire. The liquid cheese gets scooped out on crackers and paired with allll the other cheeses you can possibly imagine.
What’s on your CBA list this Christmas? Is there anything missing from mine… or am I truly… a Christmas bore?
Wanna tuck this in your recipe book for later? Pin it to your recipies board on pinterest. ⤵
