5 Secrets To A Peaceful Christmas
With Christmas only weeks away, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the holidays. Here are a few tips to help you sail calmly through a hectic holiday season.
1) Focus on what’s important
Is there a way you can serve someone today (helping someone load their groceries, bringing someone’s newspaper up to their door, or shoveling snow for a neighbor)? In finding ways to serve others, we become aware of the needs of those around us and experience the joy that serving others brings both the servant and those served.
2) Remind yourself that it’s OK to say, "NO"
Being everything to all people isn’t healthy or balanced and it leaves you feeling tired and resentful. Instead, be intentional about what activities and traditions you choose. While your setting boundaries for yourself, enjoy that cup of hot cocoa and savor the thought of having extra time doing what’s truly important.
3) Don’t expect to do every cute craft on Pinterest
Pinterest offers endless ways you can exhaust yourself during the holidays. Everything from fashioning a homemade Christmas wreath to adorn your door to making marshmallow reindeer pops, mason jar gift giving, snow-covered pinecone trees, gingerbread fudge, Christmas table settings, woodland creature ornaments, Santa pancakes, candy cane crescent rolls…get my drift??? Measure your expectations. Choose 1-2 activities per week, not per hour!
4) Make Christmas worshipful
Christmas carols always get me in the mood. Those reverent songs of adoration have a way of ushering me into the throne room of the Master and it’s in singing them that my focus returns to where it ought to be.
We are also called to fellowship with other believers. In coming together, we become part of a community. It gives us a chance to "...consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds." (Hebrews 10:24 NIV)
And during this time, steep yourself in God's Word. Let Him renew your mind, change and refresh you.
5) Take time to connect with the ones you love.
Each year, we sit down with our family Advent book and each night my children get to open an artistically drawn doorway and read together a page of the Christmas story. When we have company, we pass the book around. Everyone loves the beautifully drawn artwork and they hear the message of the Savior’s love for them. It’s a wonderful way to bring the family together. Add in some gingerbread cookies and hot apple cider and you’re all set!
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The Advent Book
