How to Keep Holiday Stress Low with Daily Rhythms and Routines

So often, we get caught up in the rush of creating the perfect holiday experience for our children and families, that we forget to step back. In trying to do it all and do it all well, we end up frazzled. In our frazzled state, we snap at the kids, ignore our husbands, and start to feel very isolated even in the midst of any connections we thought we were creating. It doesn’t have to be that way.

In her book, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin writes, “What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.” This is a very important reminder during the holidays when the urgent tasks of hosting parties, preparing food, and Christmas gift shopping have a way of trampling what is important in our lives. Having daily rhythms and routines are important ways to keep holiday stress low and not let what is important get pushed out of the way.

Keep holiday stress low (or beat it altogether) by intentionally making a plan before the holidays!

The best part about this is that your plan doesn’t have to differ very much from what your typical day looks like. It does, however, require that you be intentional with your time.

In order to be intentional with your time, you first have to understand the time that you have.

A quick way to do this is to pull out a sheet of paper or an hourly planner and plot out your typical daily rhythm through the week plus any non-negotiables.

• Jot down the basics: wake up times for you and the kids, meal times, bed times, etc. This is your basic daily rhythm. It’s what typically happens without you giving much thought to it.
• Add in any personal non-negotiables (ie, daily prayer time, exercise, etc.)
• Then fill in any events, appointments, etc. that are non-negotiable as you near the holidays.

Use your daily rhythm to keep holiday stress low by assigning time to holiday-related tasks.

This is where you get to look at your rhythm and decide when you want to complete specific activities. It is so easy to allow our time to slip away from us due to scrolling on social media or even just indecision on what to tackle next. Assigning a time or a few times to specific tasks helps your brain know what it needs to focus on next ahead of time.

Before you just fill in any (or every) open spot, take into consideration your energy levels and your kids emotional needs. If your toddler is an absolute bear without his afternoon nap, going shopping with him in tow during that time probably isn’t the best option. Plan on having some down time – leave some white space.

Here are a few ideas on what to fill in:

• Decide on a few options for shopping (either on-line or off-line)
• Plan on when you want to wrap gifts and where you will hide them.
• Schedule in when you will do any necessary meal planning and grocery shopping. Take into account any established habits you already have around meal planning. (For example, I meal plan and grocery shop every 2 weeks. A holiday meal is going to fall within that 2 week period at some point. When it does, I will add that holiday meal planning onto the meal planning and grocery shopping that I will already be doing.)
• Dedicate a day or part of a day to holiday food prep if you think it will be necessary.
• Will you be traveling? Block off those days and decide when you will be doing laundry and packing.
• Will you have overnight guests? Decide when you will do any cleaning and preparing for them.
• Make a list/a plan on what the kids will be doing when they are on break (this goes for both homeschool and brick and mortar school educated children). This includes finding a baby sitter if necessary.
• Schedule the fun, Christ-centered family activities that you have planned.
• Don’t forget to leave some white (open) space.

One of the best ways to stress less around the holidays is to keep realistic expectations around your daily rhythm and holiday plans.

It happens to the best of us. Your daily rhythm is happily staring back at you on paper and you’ve managed to fit in all that you need to get done as you approach each holiday. Then you get started, and….

• A child gets sick, so the family never gets to go out to get the Christmas tree. Your husband ends up getting one from the boy scouts down the road instead.
• Your potatoes burn as you prepare some of the food for the Thanksgiving meal and spend extra time getting it into a new pan so the burnt parts don’t contaminate the rest of the food.
• Packing for your trip takes longer than you expected, so you leave later than you intended.

This is life. You can expect everything to go perfectly and end up feeling disappointed and glum. Or you can expect things to not go perfectly and end up feeling happy and thankful that it went as well as it did! You always have a choice on what perspective you want to take.

A routine or a daily rhythm is really just a series of habits that you have grown accustomed to doing over time.

One of the greatest habits you can begin to foster is the habit of stepping back.

• Pause, step back, and listen to the joy that is around you.
• Step back and notice the smiles on your children’s faces.
• Step back amidst the thing that went wrong and laugh.
• Step back and take a moment to look your husband or child in the eye and tell them how much you love them.
• Step back and thank God for the exact moment you are experiencing.

Stepping back is an act of intentionally discovering the peace amidst the chaos. It’s intentionally discovering joy in the mundane. It’s intentionally taking a moment for gratitude.

For truly, without gratitude, the best of plans and even the best of executions of those plans, will do very little to keep the holiday stress low.

Now it’s time to get started! Comment below and tell me what creates the most stress for you around the holidays and how you are now going to get ahead of it.