The Holiday Season is for Spending Time with Family

If you're like me, family includes your four-legged companion!

The holiday season, with its twinkling lights, festive decorations, and warm traditions, is a special time of year. It’s a season that brings families together, by creating cherished memories and fosters bonds that last lifetimes. Even so, amid the hustle and bustle of holiday preparations, there are many within our community and families who find holidays to be incredibly difficult. Somehow holidays have a way of reminding us of what we do have, and what we don’t.

Dear friend, if you should find yourself on the latter end of despair when the holidays come, please know that Grace is always an option. Whether that is extending it to yourself, or to others.

Choose Grace, my friend.

It can be easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of activities and miss the essence of what makes the season truly magical-quality family time. In this blog, I’m going to explore why family time during the holidays is essential, the challenges it can present, and my strategies to help you prioritize and savor those most precious moments.

Family Traditions

As I’ve gotten older and watched my children grow, wisdom has taught me that so many firm foundations can be built on family traditions. Many of you are reading this blog from a modern motherhood perspective. I encourage you to make a list of beautiful family traditions that you hope to have versus the ones that you remember from your own experiences or childhood.

High-quality bonding time can be something that you put on the calendar. Not joking. I know it’s on my calendar! I list things like when to start preparing my children’s rooms for the winter weather, when to get the Christmas tree, when to do family cooking, when to make big grocery trips, and for my adult children: when to pack sweet holiday boxes to send to them in the mail in anticipation of the holiday.

Lists can help us visualize and plan this quality time even further. Here’s one that outlines some of the time you can set aside on your calendar:

Adult children’s holiday boxes can include dollar store ornaments, one dozen homemade cookies, a silly scarf that will make them laugh from the thrift store for their own holiday party, and a holiday card from you stating how much you are looking forward to them being home. If you’re feeling a little more generous, perhaps a gift card to pick up a peppermint hot chocolate.
Create a PDF document ahead of time of your must-have, grocery list, and the recipes that are unique to your family. If you don’t have these recipes, my goodness, get a Pinterest account and begin to find the unique recipes you hope to create as your own traditions.
Take the time to prepare your children’s bedrooms and get them ready for winter, or simply, for the holidays. This can be as easy as a small throw pillow from the thrift store with a reindeer on it. It can also be a snowflake ornament that you hang from their bedside lamp. It’s just those tiny little intentional actions that add up to so much.
Tablescapes are one of my most favorite things, and I’ve created collections of holiday dishware that are all from the dollar store or a thrift store. Whether it’s swapping out your dishes for the winter months just to be festive or for creating a beautiful tablescape for a Christmas meal, it doesn’t have to break the bank. It’s about making sweet traditions and building that firm foundation of memories.

Scheduling traditions and rituals ensures that these foundations remain strong. What quality bonding time means and how I want to achieve it can all be fulfilled by putting it on my calendar. Crafting documents that itemize the various aspects of these traditions (recipes, reminders, inspiration, you name it!) for yourself can be extremely helpful.

I love using the halfway point in the year, whether it’s June or July, to take a few minutes to think ahead on how I want the holidays to look, analyze the time I need to take off from work and be intentional with how I proceed. For example, Amazon had Prime Day in July this year and I was able to purchase just a couple of gifts well in advance in anticipation of the holidays.

When it comes to being intentional and planning with everyone else in mind, it can be so easy to forget to include ourselves in the equation. Here’s a few tips and tricks for those of us who are juggling modern motherhood with everything else:

Amid the holiday obligations and schedules, please take the time to prioritize your own self-care. Whether that’s hair or nails, you’re important, and you are not meant to be on the end of the to-do list. You are meant to be at the forefront — take care of yourself so that you may pour into others.
Do not lay your happiness or expectations at the feet of family or friends. If you choose to give, give without expectation.
When it comes to finances, decide what your budget is going to look like and allocate for each family member that you intend on purchasing for. Leave a bit of wiggle room for that occasional community member or teacher who has meant so much to you. Skip giving out of obligation. Give from the heart instead.

The holiday season offers us the unique opportunity to strengthen family bonds and create lasting memories. Putting together a hardcover book with the years past photos is a sweet touch for your family to look through on Christmas day. Order multiple books, so that if your adult children are unable to make a holiday meal due to distance or circumstance, one can be mailed to them. Below are a few links for making your own photo-related items:

My Photo Products

Chatbooks

Artifact Uprising

Those Christmas cards of years past can still be a sweet touch of kind words to distant friends or people in your community who do so much. Choosing five holiday cards of earnest gratitude and holiday wishes are more important than 50 cards of obligation.