Three Ways to Celebrate Well this Holiday Season

Hello November!

We are officially through the first holiday of "the holidays!"

Halloween is behind us, and we are headed right into Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year!

I do not know about you, but I feel like it all came so fast! I feel like it was just yesterday that I was packing up last year's decorations!

As a child, I often heard adults grumble about how Christmas decor was coming out earlier and earlier each year and how frustrating it was to see it in November. I did not see the harm in it. Who does not love Christmas time? Christmas music, twinkling lights, hot cocoa, and presents! I was all for extending the amount of time we got to celebrate.

The excitement of it all as the air grows crisp, the pumpkin-flavored items start sneaking onto the shelves, and everyone starts dressing in layers. Halloween arrives with harvest festivals, costume parties, and trick-or-treating. Followed by Thanksgiving, where we visit with family, give thanks for what we have, and stuff ourselves with delicious homemade food. Then the Christmas lights go up, the trees are chopped, and all the shopping and wrapping. Before you know it… we are all preparing for a new year—a chance to do it all over again.

And maybe it is because we live in Arizona now, where the air doesn't get quite as crisp quite as early, the pumpkin patches cannot compare to the ones in our hometown, and we do not have to fret over who we will or will not see on Thanksgiving now that we live in a different state.

But I think it is something more.

I think the adults from my childhood understood something I did not.

It is more than the Christmas decor popping up in stores earlier and earlier. It is that the sooner the decor shows up, the earlier we are preparing for that moment.

We may not miss a moment when Halloween decor goes up in September. But when Christmas decor is up alongside Halloween decor in mid-October, we have already mentally skipped over Halloween and completely bypassed Thanksgiving.

This season should have us slowing down, being with family, giving thanks, and celebrating the birth of our Savior. Instead, it is filled with big box stores rushing us from one holiday to the next, buying item after item and preparing more for Instagram-worthy photos than for time with our loved ones.

Last year, my husband and I decided to buy a new Christmas tree. We started looking at Costco just a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, but they had already sold out.

We were so intent on not missing out again this year that we bought Christmas decor in September.

We knew we wanted to attend the Oogie Boogie Bash in Disneyland, so we purchased the tickets in July as soon as they went on sale. They sold out in a month. We were wearing our costumes at the event in mid-September.

It is not lost on me that I am falling in step with the game set before me, but I'm also aware that we will miss the moment if I don't.

And that is what concerns me the most. The amount of us that are missing out on the moments.

In the Bible, two words are used for "time."

The first is "chronos," closely related to "chronological" time, and refers to measured, ticking, quantitive time.

The second is "kairos," which is translated most directly to "right time" or "opportune moment."

We have no control of ("chronos") time, but we can all work on making sure that we are present for ("kairos") the moment.

I want to share three ways we can all attempt to be more present this holiday season.

1. Celebrate with Purpose

There are so many different ways we can celebrate, and many of us have other traditions we partake in. Often, there are so many opportunities that we feel torn in multiple directions, busier than we want. Or maybe we do not participate in any of them to avoid the overwhelm.

To not burn out or miss out, let us celebrate with purpose. Make a list of the things that you want to prioritize this season.

Do you want to host Thanksgiving or celebrate at someone else's house?

Do you want to send out personalized Christmas cards or store-bought ones?

Will you celebrate Advent with an Advent wreath and candles, or will you do a study?

Whatever your plans look like, know what is essential to you to prepare well and not miss out on the moment.

2. Prepare Well

With today's culture and the way big box stores are doing things, we all must prepare well.

This does not have to look like buying all the stuff the second it hits the shelves. But it often will be tied to getting things ready earlier than we are used to.

As I said, last year, the Christmas trees at Costco sold out even before Thanksgiving, Advent studies often sell out in November, and personalized Christmas cards require pictures to be taken and weeks to create, order, arrive, and be sent out.

If you want to be present at the moment when it arrives, make sure you are well prepared. The better we prepare for Christmas before Thanksgiving, the more present we can be for Thanksgiving. And when it is time to light the Advent candles, we will be thankful that we remembered to buy new ones this year rather than finding ourselves with the short stubs left from last year's Advent.

3. Be Present

I once read a quote, "The blurred image around your phone is called life."

The quote hit home for me.

Because of the culture today, so many of us find ourselves scrolling and sometimes comparing, rather than putting our phones down, being present with those we love, and being thankful for what we have rather than focusing on what others have.

Now that you have decided how to celebrate and prepared well for the celebrations, treat yourself to the present. Be present. You will not regret it.

Not all of us will do these perfectly. I have good intentions to do each of these things each and every year, and yet I miss events I plan on going to, forget to get a picture in time for personalized Christmas cards, and end up doing four days of an Advent study on the last day of the week because I did not plan my time well. But it is an excellent way to plan each year to do slightly better than the next!

Subscribe to my e-mails to receive a follow up with great links that will help you put all of these steps into action!