Design Crafters

It is so common, it is a cliche, families are overly stressed at the holidays. There are a few reasons for this stress…which can end up being quite damaging to both health and relationships.

• instead of just ordering personalized holiday cards, you sit down and create a different one for each of your 500 friends
• we all over extend ourselves at the holidays, eat poorly, lose sleep, work overtime
• we completely freak out about finding the right thing to buy for someone
• then spend WAY too much to buy it
• we feel like we need to make contact with every human being that we have ever known, within a 30 day period
• we put everyone else’s needs before ours
• we ignore our body’s cries for rest
• we spend countless hours watching a Christmas Story, wishing things could be like the good old days

And in asking our body, psyche and emotions to deal with this burden, we use all available resources just to make it through. When it comes to evenings with the family, getting homework done, spending a quiet Sunday together, forget it!

We become crabby and snarky and snipe at each other…we don’t have time to stop long enough to tell each other that we care. Family dinners go out the window…teens hide under a mound of dirty laundry.

But, it doesn’t have to be this way…this year, vow to do something different. Slow down, accept that you will not get everything finished that you want to accomplish. Instead, savor each moment, reach out and embrace the time spent with your family…remember that you can celebrate friends 24/7, not just in the last 30 days of the year.