Christmas ornaments
How I love the holidays! We bring out the special decorations, evoking nostalgic feelings and memories of years past. The sounds of favorite music playing and the smell of Holiday Tea simmering on the stove add a pleasant backdrop to the activities. For a few weeks our home is transformed into a delightful cornucopia of warm, pleasant sights, sounds and smells.
Peace
Somewhere in the midst of all the fun, however, do you begin to feel a sensory overload? As exciting as all the holiday decorations can be, I still begin to long for order and for a simpler nest. This year we took down the tree and the other decorations as a family. My son Michael climbed nimbly up and down the pull-down stairs up to the attic to retrieve the boxes, and then we all – even my 95-year-old dad – set to work putting away the decorations. We sorted through them as we packed, placing some duplicates and extras into cardboard boxes to donate.
Two hours later, the boxes safely stashed in the attic until next year, we put the living room back together. As we surveyed the cleared spaces, the sense of peace and calm that filled me took me totally by surprise! As much as I love the trappings of Christmas, the extra visual overload - combined with the excitement of having all of my family under my roof for the first time in several years - had taken its toll on me.
What can I do next Christmas to minimize my feelings of stress, of sensory overload? I decided to:
- occassionally turn off the Christmas music and delight in the silence as I gaze at the twinkling lights on the tree
- cut down on how many decorations we put out. (Do I really need to put twenty-three snowmen on my shelf, or would eight to twelve get the point across? Do I need to have something Christmas-y on every horizontal surface in each room?)
- Set a date with my family for a “taking down the decorations party” soon after Christmas.
Let’s keep Christmas as “the most wonderful time of the year” by simplifying our expectations of ourselves!