Don’t feel guilty if you dismiss the idea of ​​a perfect Christmas as it just doesn’t exist

Unfortunately, the potential for special features has evolved to offer so many land mines that the entire endeavor has been filled with stress.

This Christmas we need to keep our wits about us so that we can avoid unnecessary tension by successfully dodging these land mines.

Some of the mines are obvious – like the family feud. The last two years of lockdown have provided too many people with the perfect opportunity to criticize others, and simmering resentment has turned into open hostility in many families.

As a psychotherapist, I was dismayed to see so many family feuds erupt as a result of Covid. Some people felt their relatives were playing fast and loose with lockdown rules and putting their loved ones at risk.

Others believed her extended family was using the lockdown rules as a shield to do whatever the hell they wanted.

Many others felt “left out” during lockdown – shut out by a cruel pandemic that forced us to decide who was important enough to risk meeting and who could be placed in the outer circle.

After a war, there is often an implicit understanding among survivors that they must accept so much bad behavior that they must call a truce – or no one will ever get over it. Maybe we need something similar now?

The pandemic has been awful and few of us have covered ourselves in glory, so maybe now is the time to see if we can fix the ghosts of Christmases past, accept that we can agree to disagree , and still enjoy the festive season together.

Other potential landmines are family traditions. As Jerry Seinfeld wisely pointed out, “There is no such thing as ‘family fun.'”

Christmas traditions can create a lot of excitement. There is wisdom in discerning which tradition has become joyless and needs adjustment, and which remains soul-nourishing.

Insisting on your wayward teen to attend all traditional family events could be cost prohibitive.

More seriously, when there’s a mental illness in the family, some family members can become determined — beyond any sense of sanity — to prove to themselves that despite the family traditions they’ve always had, they can still have the family traditions that they always had mental challenges.

It is often more valuable to figure out which events should involve the whole family and which should only involve a few members.

The impossibility of finding the right Christmas present is another path down the rabbit hole of misery. It’s too easy to spend huge amounts of money to find a gift that reflects our feelings for another person. This futile task provokes stress in even the most laid-back individuals and drives the more irritated among us off the cliff.

Therefore, the “perfect Christmas present” is a conceptual trap that must be avoided at all costs. It’s just impossible, year after year, decade after decade, to buy our loved ones something thoughtful that reflects how much we love them.

When we are in the first love frenzy we inadvertently create fancy standards when we give phenomenal gifts to our lovers, but as the years go by it gets harder and harder. Somebody has to put an end to this.

If you’ve already made the crazy telescope idea, experience gift idea, DIY kit, and fun novelty gift, then you should be able to agree among friends and family that the glory days of fabulous gifts are over.

Instead of racking our brains and getting more and more frantic, could some of us instead agree that a simple gift with a heartfelt message in a well-chosen Christmas card is good enough? And is that good enough?

In fact, most of us could do worse than set out to celebrate “Christmas without fuss or thought.” That means we’d rather not get stressed when the Christmas lights go out, or when someone forgets the filling, or when the same someone buys a fridge full of cheese that’s sure to go to waste.

Often there is one person who shoulders the emotional burden of Christmas. If that person is you, lower your standards. Striving for perfection robs us of joy and leads us into a minefield.

You have the choice between a Merry Christmas or a Perfect Christmas. You can’t get both. Perfection may give us a sense of pride or contentment, but it doesn’t bring joy. And joy rarely brings perfection – but it warms our hearts.

The Christmas rush can take so much effort that it makes the whole time a time of pressure.

The last few years have been weird. We felt guilty for getting together and guilty for staying apart — but this year may be different.

This year we are free to come together as we have for millennia and wish each other well.

We can reject the idea of ​​the perfect holiday season. Instead, we can be wary of the landmines, lower our expectations, and have a very Merry Christmas.