Christmas Traditions Should Be Full Of Pajama Opportunities

Christmas Traditions Should Be Full Of Pajama Opportunities

Kristyn Meyer is on a journey to make herself the best human that she can be. These posts are a reflection of that. She welcomes your support via reading and through commissioned affiliate links within her posts! To stay up to date on all of her shenanigans, please subscribe to her email list! (psst…there’s a free gift involved)

The holidays are upon us!

2019 is literally right around the corner.

I’m not going to be cliche and talk about how fast the year has gone, because you can have that conversation with almost every other person in your life in the next week or so. If you haven’t already.

I’ve been trying over the years to simplify the holidays. I hate all the commercialism that comes with it, and how far away it actually is from what the real reason is. Don’t get me wrong – I love a well-decorated house during the December month. I have a really nice Advent calendar from Target. I whip out sugar cookies like Betty Effin Crocker.

But my kids don’t have 8,000 gifts under the tree and I try not to kill myself to be the hostess with the mostest (although I am of course, by default).

In fact, I actually do not like hosting the holiday events. I did the first year we bought our house and it was so much work it made the day overly stressful. So I never offered again.

With that being said, how is there still so much to do during this month?

If it’s not this holiday party, it’s another one. If it’s not a Secret Santa, it’s a charity donation. There’s this book exchange, and then teacher gifts (my daughter has NINE preschool teachers. NINE. And it’s in poor taste to only give gifts to a few of them, I googled it).

And somehow, in the end, you are supposed to have enough energy for the big dance. Big danceS I should say. Because even after simplifying, there’s my husband’s birthday on the 22nd (he insists on having one every year), and the family celebrations and Christmas Eve traditions and Christmas Day.

It’s finding the perfect cake to make your husband so he doesn’t think you don’t love him, and coming up with cute gifts for him from the kids. It’s having festive snacks for the family movie gathering at your house that your mother in law proposed this year.

And you can’t just eat a normal dinner on Christmas Eve, so that has to be planned.

And what kind of mother serves her children plain waffles on Christmas morning? Obviously, they have to have Pinterest-worthy green dyed Christmas tree waffles.

Then there’s breakfast the morning the in-laws are there and actual food on Christmas day.

My daughter also reminded me this morning that we have yet to get the gingerbread house kit she saw at the store and make it.

AND I HAVEN’T EVEN TAKEN MY KIDS TO SEE SANTA.

THROW ME A FRIGGIN BONE DECEMBER.

Can we institute a pajama-only December? Joking. Not Joking.

You know what I want to do? I want to sit my ass on my couch and binge watch Christmas movies with my kids. Which is what I plan to do on Sunday with some of their little friends and their mom. I want to eat Christmas cookies that I don’t gift to other people. I want to have the ability to not care what other people think of my supplied holiday snacks. And I want the holidays to go by without having to get after people about wearing their shoes on my carpet or eating on my beige colored couch.

And I want to sleep. For roughly three days.

And bake. I have been heavily into baking. The cupcakes and cookies kind, not the recently legalized baked. It relaxes me and makes me happy.

Once again, the cupcakes and cookies kind.

Yes, I love my family. All of them. Some more than others. But there is still love involved for every one of them. So don’t go calling me ungrateful or Grinch-like or bitchy or anything else that you had going through your head. I am a working mother of young kids. I come home every day and try to muster up the energy to not be a snippy, jerk-like mom. Also I try to maintain a semi-cleaned home. Sometimes I try to have cooked meals and clean laundry for the fam. I try to shower daily. Also I try to have enough downtime so that I don’t come across like an unmedicated person who stuck their finger in an electrical outlet.

But I am tired.

Christmas Traditions Should Be Full Of Pajama Opportunities

I just want to fast forward to Tuesday morning and be present and in the moment to see my daughter come down the stairs to the Vampirina car she has been asking Santa for. Well, telling me that she was asking Santa for it since you know – haven’t taken the kids to see him yet. And then watch the baby open his new cars. I want to see the excitement on their faces and feel the happiness in the air. And I want to have all of the other events behind me.

These are the Christmas traditions I want to keep during the holiday season:

1. Baking. Cookies and Cupcakes.
2. Binge watching Christmas movies
3. Christmas morning
4. Volunteering of some sort – need to keep life in perspective
5. Family/friend informal gatherings
6. Christmas Eve church service.

These are the Christmas traditions I want to incorporate:

1. December pajama month for all events. Off to work? Wear pajamas. Christmas Eve mass? Pajamas.
2. Gifting housekeeping services in place of whatever else is given.
3. Not hosting? Bring your own food. New host rules that mean you unlock your door and that’s it. BYOF.
4. Lowering the bar. Why do I feel the need to have special food on Christmas day? It’s just the four of us. The kids aren’t going to remember it. But my brain remembers it, and my brain would remember that I was a shitty mom for not doing something special.
5. Secret Dinner Service instead of Secret Santa. Don’t give me a candle, send me a Blue Apron dinner kit.

Can We Institute A Pajama-Only December?

I know that I will enjoy all the events that come up. I’m really excited for my husband’s birthday actually, and can’t wait to make the cake that I picked. My daughter can’t wait to see Santa this weekend, and her excitement makes me excited. I’ve told the baby that I want him to take his first steps on Christmas Day as his gift to me, so if he abides that will be wonderful.

It’s just hard to enjoy the time when it all feels so overwhelming; when it feels like you are literally sprinting from one thing to another. Each individual event is fun and important, but when you are a planner like I am and you have your To-Do list that is continually growing, you feel the stress and anxiety build.

So. From tomorrow morning until Christmas evening I am going to enjoy the holiday time.

I am going to enjoy my last day of work in 2018 tomorrow. I am going to bake a kick-ass birthday cake for the husband when I get home. Then I’m going to snuggle in with all of my babies and watch movies by the Christmas tree. We are going to get up on Saturday and open birthday presents with my husband.

Then we are going to go out and see Santa, have a special birthday lunch, get the desired gingerbread house kit, and spend the rest of the day together, enjoying each others company and love. Then Sunday we are going to have a low-key day – husband at the football game and kids and me with friends eating as many cookies as we (I) want. That night we will start the new movie night tradition with my in-laws. Christmas Eve will be spent with church and food. We will set out the cookies, carrots, and cereal for Santa (don’t ask – evidently Santa really wants cereal at our house).

Christmas Day will be spent opening gifts and giving back to others by volunteering.

And most of all, it will be filled with memories and love. Memories because we will have stories to tell for years to come, love because I’m not going to kill anyone in the process.

Take a deep breath and enjoy this time. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, wake up each day and enjoy it to the fullest. Surround yourself with the ones you love and don’t worry about anything else. Just enjoy your life and the people that are in it. They’ll be fine with your crappy snacks.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!