Every December, I make personalized Christmas cards. I love doing a little family photo shoot and choosing the best picture. I love uploading the winner to Vistaprint and I pouring over backgrounds. I love debating what the best family message to include should be.
Once the Christmas cards have been ordered, I wait eagerly for the package to come in the mail, choose the right moment to savour opening the fat envelope and marvel over how our digital image has magically come to life through the heft of cardstock. Then comes the stage of thinking who we should send the cards to: Who we’ve become closer to this year and who we don’t see very often but still feel connected to. I make a spreadsheet with the recipients and their addresses and it’s always a bit of a life assessment—how have our relationships changed over the year? Who are new friends that get added? Who have we grown closer to? Who has drifted away?
As much as I love making and writing and sending customized Christmas cards, I also dislike doing Christmassy things in November, or worse, anytime earlier than that. I like keeping November relatively empty—a breather between Halloween and Christmas. A month when there aren’t witch or ghost or holly or stocking gel stickies on the windows and the mantel is covered with the usual clutter rather than holiday-themed clutter. I’ll buy some stocking stuffers in November but most of the presents I buy in December. Because well, it’s fun and it feels festive to Christmas shop that time of year. November is a wet and dreary month, not a seasonal one. It’s a time for Halloween recovery, Remembrance Day and soaked soccer practices.
Card making isn’t the only holiday tradition I enjoy. I like choosing wrapping paper from Winners and little gift labels from the Papery. I like making a list of who I’m getting presents for and what will go in the stocking. I like making shortbread cookies (because if you don’t make them at Christmas, when do you make them?). I like making photo albums for the grandparents or at least finding a couple of good pictures of them with my daughter to print out.
I like all these Christmas traditions, they’re meaningful. They prompt reflection and connection. They make a cold and dark time of year more exciting. Yet, they also happen at the same time as the school Christmas concert, the gymnastics medal ceremony, the “deciding who will host Christmas dinner and when,” the planning our annual New Year’s Day hike and pot luck…
On their own, each of these Christmas traditions is a treat. If the only task was making Christmas cards and sending them, that would be enjoyable. Christmas shopping by itself is enjoyable. Hosting dinner can even be enjoyable—if you have the time to plan and clean and defrost a turkey. But all of them at once? And under a strict timeline? The time pressure and multitasking turn fun activities into panic-induced chores. Half of me likes sending the cards, the satisfying feeling of a stack of envelopes getting dropped into a letter box, while the other half of me starts to simmer: “No one sends us cards anyways! They’d better appreciate this.”
A friend of mine says that she does all her Christmas preparations in November: “I feel way less stressed now that I do everything early, I’d really recommend it.” To which I give her an imaginary middle finger: “Thanks tips.”
This is, of course, the most obvious solution to manage the mayhem but I am truly not the type who has a spreadsheet for anything other than Christmas cards. The idea of a type-B person like me pulling off all the Christmas prep by November 30 is laughable.
Have I learned from my frenzied Christmases past? Does the ghost of last year’s midnight present wrapping or pre-Christmas party insomnia inform my Christmas present? Not really.
I have learned to take a few extra days off leading up to Christmas, favourite a few good photos in November, keep an eye open for cute angels for grandma’s collection whenever I’m shopping. But I still always get stumped on my brother and pull something together last-minute. I still don’t even take the photo that will end up on our cards until early December. Our cards often end up with a “Happy New Year” note scribbled on the envelope. But hey, they get there in the end.
What’s Christmas without a little overwhelm? And who am I without my aversion to November Christmas prep? Maybe one day I’ll learn…but not this year.
