Christmas in July!

"Seriously?"  Yup.  I'm serious.  I'm thinking about Christmas.

"Why, on God's Green Earth, are you thinking about Christmas?"

I'm so glad you asked.  I am currently re-working my household notebook.  (I'll show it to you when I'm done.)  One of the sections is for holiday planning.  I learned years ago that the difference between a stressed-out Christmas and a warm, peaceful Christmas was planning.  I also learned that no one else was likely to do it for me.

I don't know about you, but sitting in bumper to bumper traffic two days before Christmas trying desperately to finish my Christmas shopping doesn't inspire me to sing carols.  Standing in long lines waiting to give our money to a cranky teller isn't how I want my children to remember Christmas either.  I want to be done with that part by December so we can spend our holidays baking cookies together and doing fun Christmas projects.  I don't want to be a stressed-out mama who snaps at her kids throughout the holidays.  I want to cuddle them.  Warm and fuzzy.  Currier and Ives.

How do I accomplish this?  By simplifying and planning.  I start early.  Really early.  I like to be done with all my Christmas shopping by the end of October if at all possible.  I do most of my shopping online in comfy clothes with a cup of tea.  No Stress.  Then my favorite UPS guy starts bringing me packages (I secretly think he is the real Santa).  As each box comes, I mark the gifts off my list (so I know what has been ordered, what has arrived, and what I am still waiting for).  I wrap it/them immediately and put my gift tags on there.  Done.  No marathon gift wrapping sessions.  No worries about someone accidentally seeing their gifts.  By November if all goes according to plan, and by very early December if it doesn't, the gifts are all finished up.  Anything that needs to be shipped is ready to go and can be mailed in early December.  Now I can focus on those cookies.  I can use my energies to make Christmas crafts with the kids.  I have enough peace on me to sing those Christmas carols with them. We light a fire in the fireplace, because we are home instead of at the mall.

One of the advantages to doing Christmas this way (aside from the lack of stress), is that you can take advantage of both sales and selection (have you noticed how all the good stuff has vanished from the store shelves by mid-December?  Especially whatever toy your kid absolutely had to have to think it was a good Christmas.)  It is also much easier to stay within your budget.

In planning our Christmas early, I do more than just gift-shopping.  I plan out the meals, the cards, the events, the pictures -- everything.  Some things you obviously won't know until you get a little closer to the date, but if you have a master plan and calendar you can just plug those things right in.  No more running around like a mad-person trying to keep up with an overly-packed schedule.  No more double scheduling.  You have a master plan.  The things that are really important to you are already scheduled, so when the next-door neighbor's aunt begs you to be the president of the Christmas-for-Underprivileged-Earthworms planning committee, you already know you are booked.  Sorry Auntie, I am unavailable.

While we are on that subject, a major key to a stress-free holiday season is a simple little word.  Here it is -- "No".  Memorize it.  Use it often.  It is your ticket to freedom.  Find out what is truly important to you and your family (Ask them.  You might be surprised.  They may be less interested in a Martha Stewart Christmas than you think.  And they may not even like going to every Christmas Program in the near vicinity.  You may find you can have a much more simple Christmas than you thought.)  Once you know what is really important to your family, you can cut everything else out.  It really doesn't matter what your neighbors think.  They don't have to live in your house.  And they may be doing a lot of stress-induced fighting behind closed doors while they try to keep up with their "ideal Christmas".  Do you really want that?  Live your own life.

If you have never done anything so radical as planning out your holidays ahead, then there are some sites to help you.  Organized Christmas is a site dedicated to making sure you are ready for the holidays.  The have a printable planner that starts incrementally working through your to-do list starting in August.  They have a 6-week Christmas Countdown that you can follow via email, facebook, twitter or rss feed.  Families with Purpose has a free e-book called "8 Weeks to a Frazzle Free Christmas" with all kinds of tips to help you simplify and plan your holidays.  You can also follow along by subscribing to their newsletter or following them on Facebook or Twitter.  Their plan begins in October.  They also have a 6-week and a 4-week plan in case you just can't bring yourself to think about Christmas yet.

I know that Christmas will be the last thing on my mind once school starts, so I went ahead and signed up for both sites now while I am busy planning out the school year.  By signing up now, they will remind me when I need to start getting serious about Christmas.  Problem solved.

Have a great day!

Angela