How I Survive the Holidays (Without Losing My Mind)

Strategies, shortcuts, and sanity savers from someone who loves the season but hates the circus.

The 2017 film A Bad Moms Christmas kicks off with a montage reminding us just how much work the holidays demand from moms. Clip below, but here’s the eerily spot-on quote:

“All any mom wants is for their kid to have an amazing Christmas. That said, Christmas is an insane amount of work. First, you have to buy gifts for every human being you’ve ever met… then you have to decorate your house… then you have to go to all your kids’ Christmas shows… then there’s all the over-the-top Christmas parties (Oh my God, are these lobster Santa hats? Are these a thing now? What the F!), then there’s all the cooking, all the cleaning, all the wrapping… It’s insane! There’s just never enough time!”

Now, while the bulk of that movie has some wild hijinks, some questionable choices, and a truly strange cameo by Kenny G, that line above really resonated with me. (Related/unrelated, I’m not saying it’s a great movie, but there is the whole sexy Santa subplot… just saying…)

The Thanksgiving to Christmas sprint is insane. But it’s also my favorite time of the year. So how do I manage to survive, and maybe even take a breath and enjoy it? Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years:

Decide what matters and what doesn’t

Here’s the truth: you can’t do it all, and you don’t have to try. With a little over four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, figure out your non-negotiables—the must-dos and the want-tos—and get those on the calendar before everything else tries to elbow its way in.

Some of my non-negotiables include:

• Cutting down a live Christmas tree (actually two, because I have way too many ornaments)

• Decorating those Christmas trees as a family

• Hosting our annual brunch party for friends

• Sending out Christmas cards

• Taking at least one evening to drive around town and look at Christmas lights while listening to Christmas music

Some of those things might not matter to you at all. Maybe Christmas cards aren’t your thing, and that’s completely fine. I just happen to love sending them (more on that below), so I carve out the time.

Some things that matter a lot to other people but are less important to me (my ‘take them or leave them” list):

• Putting up Christmas lights outside (We live in a rural area at the end of a cul-de-sac - basically it’s just us and the Amazon delivery guys who will even see the lights)

• Baking all the Christmas cookies (I’m not much of a baker, too many rules to follow! So I pick one or two favorites and either outsource the rest (thanks Mom!) or forgo them altogether)

• Seeing all the Christmas shows or riding the Polar Express, etc, etc. (My daughters are in their dance studio’s production of the Nutcracker, and their dance team performs at what feels like every tree lighting in the county… that checks the “holiday show” box enough for me)

Your list will be different than mine; figure out what actually matters to you and give yourself grace to let the rest go.

Do it your way

For some reason, Christmas comes with more inherited traditions than any other holiday, many of which don’t actually matter. We keep doing them out of habit, or nostalgia, or because someone once said, “That’s how we’ve always done it.” If that works for you, awesome. If not, feel entirely free to change up the whole thing.

My best example is our Christmas Eve dinner. My husband’s Italian family celebrates Christmas Eve with the Festa dei sette pesci (The feast of the seven fishes). The traditional menu is very elaborate and involves a lot of foods that most people don’t want to eat (who needs to keep eels in the bathtub for a few days before the holiday?) and an insane amount of pasta.

When we started hosting, we decided to make it our own. Over the years, we have perfected a modified menu: The first course is five seafood hors d’ouervres, followed by two pasta courses with seafood in the sauce (Calamari in red sauce - a nod to the menu my in-laws always served, and ravioli with scallops in a cream sauce - something different but delicious). We also played around with the timing and now do the hors d’ouervres before Christmas Eve mass, and the two pasta dishes after mass, allowing people to actually enjoy (and digest!).

Maybe this version of the Festa would be considered sacriligous (no eel served here!), but it works for us. Our family loves it, it’s easier, and we’re still “checking the boxes.” We made it our own.

One of my favorite ornaments: Blanche in her wedding dress!

Rinse and repeat

Christmas only comes once a year, so there’s no reason not to figure out what works and just repeat it year after year. And once you have a solid plan, not having to think of something new saves time.

This works particularly well when it comes to menus. We tend to have the same menu for all our big holiday meals:

• Thanksgiving (we might sub out a side dish to try something new, but it’s basically the same every year)

• Christmas Friend Brunch (we cater from the same local restaurant each year with almost the same menu)

• Christmas Eve Dinner (see above)

• Christmas Morning Brunch (same menu every year - including a make-ahead breakfast casserole - ask me for the recipe!)

This could also work for gift giving, especially for more “generic” gift recipients, like all those teacher gifts.

The key is to document everything. We keep a running Google doc with all these menus (including portion sizes or how big a turkey to buy). Document it now so you don’t have to think about it later.

Be open to shortcuts

This really should be a no-brainer: when there’s a perfectly good shortcut, take it. My personal sticking point was our Christmas cards. I adore sending them. And, yes, I’m that weirdo who actually enjoys hand-addressing every envelope. Give me a glass of wine, a stack of cards, some stamps, and The Holiday playing in the background, and I’m living my best life.

Watching The Holiday at last year’s Book Club Christmas Party

(Side note: I love The Holiday. Is it the best Christmas movie ever? No. Are there a zillion plot holes? Absolutely. But do I watch it at least a dozen times each holiday season? Yes. Have I already watched it twice so far this year? Also yes. And shoutout to my friend Amanda - on the last night of our girls’ trip to Spain, we watched The Holiday but fast-forwarded through all but the Jude Law parts. If you’re wondering, that strategy cuts the movie down to an hour. Highly recommend!)

I love hand-addressing Christmas cards, but it takes forever.

My husband had the very reasonable suggestion that we should just print labels.

For some insane reason, I fought this. No! I love handwriting the cards! But eventually I relented. I loved doing it, but I didn’t love how long it took, and it was eating into the time I had set aside for other Christmas activities.

Then two years ago, we found the real cheat code: uploading an Excel doc with all the addresses when we ordered the cards and had them address and mail the cards for us. You pay for postage and a nominal fee per card for the service. It’s totally worth it.

Resist the societal pressure to do Elf on a Shelf

I could easily write an entire post about why I can’t stand Elf on the Shelf and its surveillance-state energy. But if you want a quick way to make the holidays less stressful, skip the elf, and all the nightly “mischief” it’s supposed to get into, altogether.

That’s all I’ve got to say about that!

Just say no!

In closing…

I’m definitely not perfect when it comes to avoiding stress at the holidays (just ask my family!). But leaning into these principles over the last few years has definitely improved this time of year for me.

Some of my suggestions may work for you, some may not. But no matter what, take a deep breath and remember that none of this is as important to anyone else (your kids, your in-laws, that judgy mom at the drop-off line) as it is to you. So if it’s not perfect, that’s totally okay.

If you need to make a choice between baking an extra batch of cookies or cuddling on the couch with the kids to watch your favorite Christmas movie for the tenth time this season, choose the couch. Preferably with a hot cocoa or a festive cocktail.

Love,

Amanda

Zero F’s Favorites

Gift guides! One of my many idiosyncrasies is that I simultaneously hate shopping and love finding the perfect gift.

Enter: the gift guide. This time of year, every magazine, blogger, influencer, and their mom puts out a list of their “favorite things” (complete with affiliate links, naturally). And honestly? I’d rather scroll through all of those for inspiration than hop between a dozen websites—or, God forbid, step foot in an actual store.

So send me your favorite gift guides, and I’ll trade you cocktail recipes. I make a mean Christmas mule. Cheers!