Holidaze

Thanksgiving is next week! What the... how did that happen? It seems like I was just in Giselle's garden in Salt Lake City, picking cosmos for the living room table, and cherry tomatoes and basil to make a batch of The Sauce.

This year has been big for me - paying off credit card debt, getting new (bifocal) glasses and two root canals, moving from Utah to New York, and of course being granted a way to handle the student loan debt when I find the right community to enter. I also had my heart broken over two Carmels that didn't end up working out (it's okay! better things were on the way), only to be introduced to St. Clare and a deepening awareness of my own Franciscan/Clarian charism, leading up to my live-in with a Poor Clare monastic community in Massachusetts in January, 2016. I am humbled by all of this incredible grace.

Can I just empty this thing and
crawl inside until Jan. 2?

And now we're all looking at the calendar, realizing that Thanksgiving is up next, followed by Hannukah and Christmas, and just when you thought it was safe to put away the fancy forks and champagne flutes, New Year's Eve arrives to make us all perfectly aware that time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future. I know some people whip themselves into a frenzy over the holidays - parties, cooking, baking, gift buying, luncheons, dinners, company, family, wrapping, travel. It can be overwhelming and dizzying.

Add to that the necessity to take care of an elder in your own home, or even in a nursing home or assisted living, or dealing with the recent death of a loved one... a perfect recipe for holiday hating. I totally get it, having lived through the worst Christmas of my adult life when my mother was only a month away from her death. Elder care can be one of the most challenging elements of finding balance in a life that is already filled with children and other responsibilities. 

So in anticipation of the next two months, I'd like to offer a few tips for making life a tad bit easier:

1. Ask for help. Recruit and delegate. You do not need to and should not do it all. Divvy up the work in your family. Get the young 'uns on board even for one or two small tasks - every little bit helps, and you are helping them learn responsibility. Maybe there are mundane tasks others can help with while you do the holiday-related ones. If there aren't family members to help, maybe there is someone in your life with slightly less on their plate who can help with one or two tasks. 

   

   The only "red cups"
   I care about this holiday season

2. Company coming for drinks and nosh? Water crackers and cranberry orange goat cheese is inexpensive and easy. Add a few orange wedges, packaged dates, and dark chocolate bark on a platter. Bam. Have wine available, but otherwise it's BYOB. I highly recommend Cline (CA) Pinot Noir - inexpensive, all-natural, sustainably produced, and with warm tones. Or, try Cranberry Martinis - relatively easy and very tasty. Recipe here.
3. Only choose one project per day. Forget multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is perhaps one of the most damaging lies about what is expected of us in our post-modern age. In moderation it can be helpful, but you and I both know that at certain times of the year, multi-tasking becomes an incredible burden that we (especially women) place on ourselves because everything must be PERFECT. Am I right? Let go of the multi-tasking, which means prioritizing what must be done, what must be done first or now, and what can either be delegated (see #1) or just dropped altogether.
4. Be kind to yourself. Cranberry martinis aside (or whatever your preferred adult beverage), there has to be breathing room. It's not a race. It's not a competition (with last year, with your sister-in-law, with your parents, with anything). Pick a good book for the season and make time to read. Make time to do whatever exercise makes you feel good, whether it's running, Yoga, swimming, golf (if you're not in wintery regions), hitting a bag, etc.
5. Music is good, company is good, but don't discount the healing of silence. We all have a tendency to want noise of some kind in the background, even when we are doing something simple like baking cookies. Nothing wrong with that! If you are going to listen to music, make sure it's uplifting - if you're not a Christmas music person, consider classical or even ambient  or chill out music (Pandora is great for this). But don't forget to switch off the sound once in a while and let your mind and soul soak in the quiet.
6. Limit or completely dump social media. I'm not kidding. If you've read my recent posts, you know that Facebook has done nothing but piss me off the last few months. Seriously, though, looking at how "perfect" other people's Christmas tree/Thanksgiving turkey/New Year's cruise to the Carribbean is will not help you one bit. Neither will the rancid political atmosphere that seems to dominate on social media. And you can bet your sweet bippy that the whole "war on Christmas/there is no war on Christmas" war is going to get even worse. The red cups were only the beginning, people.

As a Catholic, of course, I am all about Advent leading up to Christmas. That's another post, but suffice it to say here that keeping your mind and heart in the Advent season will help keep the frenetic secular holiday pace at bay.

An historically accurate representation of the birth of Christ.