Unique Christmas Gifts

How can we keep from getting carried along with the madness of the urgent and leave room for the blessing of the important? Here are some suggestions that might help:

• Realize you can’t do it all. Nor — deep down — do you really want to. Because even if you could do it all, what would be the point if it’s nothing but a blur? The joy of Christmas only consists of those parts we can remember distinctly. Memories captured at high speed leave us with feelings of emptiness and regret. Enjoy more by doing less.


• Be willing to give up some of your must-do plans to protect the meaning of your absolutely-must-do plans. When expectations for a “perfect” Christmas run too high, it creates stress which can cause the whole structure of our Christmas plans to topple. Keep reasonable expectations and avoid the trap of having to capture the “perfect” Christmas. Experiencing a great Christmas with some rough edges is far better than hoping for but never reaching the “perfect” Christmas.


• Think outside the box. Treat Christmas as a multi-year event with several 11-month breaks in the middle. This can relieve the pressure to do everything this year. For example, one year could be the year you attend (or participate in) the choir performance at church. Next year could be the year for attending a Christmas theatrical production. The following year you could go caroling. Spreading activities over several years can relieve some of the pressure to squeeze a multitude of meaningful activites into a short span of 3 - 4 weeks.


• Help someone in need. Although the additional pressure of helping someone else at Christmas can add stress, you’ll feel good that you’ve done something beneficial and substantial for someone who really needs a hand.


• Stay manageable with your holiday preparations. Maybe your local supermarket can be the provider for “tastes-like-homemade” cookies. Perhaps you can take a more modest approach to your Christmas meal and “fancy it down.” Maybe a little less decorating will leave room for a little more fun.


• Don’t overdo the extravagence of your gift giving. It’s always a temptation to buy lots of gifts for those we most love. However, a boatload of “stuff” tempts the best of us to treat all our “stuff” with contempt. Concentrate on a smaller, more meaningful set of gifts, and leave more room for the recipients to enjoy them.

If you think back to your favorite Christmases, they probably were not your favorites because you got lots of stuff and did lots of activities. They were probably your favorites, because you received a gift or did an activity that underscored how much someone special loved you.

Experiencing a meaningful Christmas is like growing a flower. You can’t force a meaningful Christmas to grow any more than you can force a rose bush to bud and bloom. Instead you must prepare the ground of your Christmas season by creating an environment in which the flower of Christmas can bloom. If your ground is fertile and well-prepared, flowers of Christmas joy will flourish.

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