Winter Holiday Tips

By Cyndi Seidler

Do the holidays just seem to happen to you? Often, this time of the year can become quite stressful for many people. With all the fast-paced activities and tasks to do in preparation for the holidays, it can become quite overwhelming without some degree of planning and organization.

Creating a holiday is like orchestrating a major production.  There are props, people, and agendas involved.  Appoint yourself as the producer, and bring together the pieces of your production.  As producer, you'll be molding your vision into a reality.

Here are some tips to help make the holidays more joyous and fun:

1. Start a list of what activities would give you the most pleasure, and then decide what the main event(s) will be.  Are you going to be throwing a party?  Having a tree-trimming party?  Doing charity work?  Going on a light-gazing tour?  You might need to do meal planning, party planning, travel planning, and/or gift planning.  You might even need to prepare for family issues, like who hosts the family holiday this year.
     

2. Break down your holiday event(s) into action tasks.  Set priorities and schedules of the activities that need to be carried out.  It's a good idea to keep all your planning information in a notebook binder.  Put all your lists and information in this to use each year.  Keep meal plans, special activity plans, party plans, gift ideas, and travel details in the binder.  Create a holiday calendar and mark dates for things that need to be done ahead of time.
     

3. Get others involved.  Delegate some of the tasks to family or close friends.  After all, you're the producer, and producers do their best when they have a team helping them with the production.
     

4. Plan meals. Decide on the menus and stock up on food early.  It's even a good idea to prepare any food you can in advance.  Or, maybe you may want to let someone else cook for you and have your meal catered?  If you have helpers, designate a "desert team" to do the holiday baking.
     

5. Establish a budget.  Be realistic on your budget, as well as your schedule and skills.  It's best to try and break down a budget for each activity.    More too often, people resort to using credit cards for their spending needs.  But try to adopt policy to do cash-spending.  You won't have to look back "after the fact" that you're heavy in debt.
     

6. Get creative with gift-giving.  Make a list of gift ideas that you can create yourself (or buy at affordable costs).  Think of something memorable and personal, something useful, something consumable, something that grows, maybe some excursion experiences.  If you have some artistic abilities, make a drawing, put your song on a cassette tape, or write some prose and mount it.  How about putting together some personal mementos, like an album of photo collections, or a memorable video?  There are many creative gift-giving ideas once you sit down and give it thought.
     

7. Ship gifts out early.  This is important in ensuring the gifts you need to send by mail arrive in time.

Basically, if you've experienced stress during the holidays before, take a look at what the circumstances were in the past that caused it.  That will enable you to target what to do about it this time.  You don't need to get caught up being a victim of stress.

Copyright © 1998 Cyndi Seidler.  All Rights Reserved.
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