I love the Christmas season. I love the sights, smells, tastes, sounds… all of it.
But you know what I don’t love? That so many people feel rushed, hurried, and frazzled during Christmas.
The heart of Christmas is not about impressing people or running around at a crazy, frantic speed. And making either of those things your focus is certainly not going to help you celebrate and savor the season!
Creating a Christmas Bucket List
One thing that has helped us to slow down and just enjoy December is to create a Christmas Bucket List. We all sit down as a family and choose a few things that each of us really wants to do for Christmas.
Last year, the girls wanted to build a snowman, play in the snow as a family, decorate Christmas cookies, and go ice-skating. I wanted to do an Advent project and take the girls to the Nutcracker, Jesse wanted to go look at Christmas lights as a family and watch one of our favorite Christmas movies together.
By the time we’re done discussing our Bucket List, we’ve come up with a great list of memorable activities to do together and since everyone gave their input, there’s something (or more than one thing) on the list that each person will really enjoy.
We spread these activities out during the whole month of December, doing a few items each week. Because our list is not long and overwhelming and because we have four weeks to do it, we’re able to really take time to enjoy each thing and create beautiful memories.
This tradition has been one of the best things we’ve ever implemented to help us stay focused, calm, and intentional during the Christmas season. And it also helps us to say “no” to most of the other ideas and opportunities that come up that aren’t already on our list.
photo courtesy of BigStock
This is such a great idea. I definitely want to do this, this year with the family.
Thank you for sharing!
I love this idea of creating a bucket list and I love that the kids ideas are so simple and doable! I think it really helps in cutting down on the business. I know my husband and I have had to decide about our church’s yearly Christmas show. Last year we opted out simply because of the cost. We wanted to see The Story, something we hadn’t done, and couldn’t choose both. We were so blessed! This year we found something to do and volunteer at so our admission is FREE!!!
Kids really just want the simple things like Crystal mentioned like driving around looking at Christmas lights. One idea to add to this would be have everyone bundled in jammies and blankets in the car and make popcorn to eat as you drive through the neighborhoods!!! I know my kids will love this.
I love looking at the pretty Christmas lights people decorate their homes with. When our grandson was 7 years old we took him out to look at them and after 10 minutes he asked to go home and play his video games. Sigh.