Day 3: Simplify Christmas now.

May your walls know joy, may every room hold laughter, and every window open to great possibility -- Mary Anne Radmacher

Today’s idea is to simplify Christmas.  In the past I loved to go all out decorating, buying and wrapping gifts, attending numerous performances, watching every holiday movies that came on television, baking 10 kinds of cookies/treats, etc.  The joy of the season was leaking out of my holidays due to my unrealistic expectations of what Christmas needs to be for me.

I’ve already celebrated an early Christmas out-of-town with most of my family.  An out-of-town Christmas was necessarily simplified to avoid carrying all the gifts (little kids’ gifts are BIG!) onto a plane.  So, the gifts were all shipped to my stepson’s home for us to wrap when we got there.  A stop at the store for wrapping paper and tape (forgot the gift tags, so had to make them) and we were good to go.  Now that I’m back home, it’s time to implement further simple tips for our celebration of Christmas.

To make our holidays more meaningful, we’ll continue with traditions that make our family unique, such as a Christmas Eve smorgasbord (complete with pickled herring, which I think is gross, but hey, it’s Swedish tradition!), reading the Christmas story from Luke, and watching/going to a fun movie on Christmas Day. (Simple Tip #1: Establish with your family which traditions are truly important.)

Baking this year at my house is just two kinds of cookies, some easy bars and a few mini-pumpkin breads that can be shared as gifts for visitors. OK, true confession, one kind of treat will be the easy slice and bake cookies you can buy, with red or green sprinkles added :-)  (Simple Tip #2 - Have only one bake-a-thon for all your celebrations - your family, visitors, work potlucks, etc. You may need to hide some of the holiday deliciousness!)  While gathering your baking materials together, ditch any food products that’ve been around since last Christmas, (no one wants to bite into the hard non pareil candies from last year!) and take a quick glance through your mixing bowls/bakeware. (I am donating 2 of my 3 cake-takers -- what was I thinking??)

More to come tomorrow...have a yummy day!