Let's Talk About...The Holiday Arc

Ok. Are you stressing out about the holidays? Maybe you are someone who doesn't give the holidays much attention. Or you might be somewhere in the middle.

The holidays bring a gamut of feelings and depending on where you are in life, the excitement, or in some cases, anxiety, changes over the years. The meaning of the holidays also transforms a bit.

When you are very young Christmas is filled with excitement and anticipation. The most stressful thing you worry about is talking to Santa. I must say that talking to Santa can be pretty scary. I remember sitting on Santa's lap and looking into an acrylic beard hoping he was the real deal and that he actually will deliver on the 25th. You also worry about being good, because we all know Santa doesn't come if you are naughty.

As you grow older and start giving gifts yourself, you worry about what to buy and what is appropriate for a friend or a boy/girlfriend. Too personal a gift sends the wrong message and a too big or small gift is awkward. Those are the years when you find yourself at Target on Dec. 24.

Then when you have children of your own, you see the holiday wave approaching, starting around Halloween, and it is a bumpy ride all the way to January.

The pressure mounts as you realize it is completely up to you to make the holidays magical for your children. That's a tall order. It's not just about buying and then hiding gifts. It is also about creating a glistening home, decorated in yuletide stuff and elves on shelves. It's cookies baking. It's carols playing. It's storytelling.

It is also going to your children's school concerts, making food for their school party (or as some prefer, "observance"), and trying to maintain some calm in the mayhem.

It is sending out Christmas cards with a clever update on the kids whose smiling faces (that you photographed amid the tears weeks before) beam from the card (or the pdf).

It is taking your children to see "The Nutcracker" and visit that same scary Santa you did. It is putting up a Christmas tree in nearly every room and inviting friends over for some delicious petit fours you made from scratch.

It is dragging out all the Spode Christmas dishes, washing them and hoping they don't break. Then trying not to think about having to box them all up again along with the tree decorations and all the cute Charles Dickens houses you have strewn about the house.

It is traveling from one set of parents to the next set of parents on Christmas Day, and making more Green Bean Business (as if you didn't have enough at Thanksgiving).

In other words, it is chaotic.

Then you reach the stage where the kids come home from college, usually with a friend or two. You still keep the spirit going but without the DEFCON 1 level of insanity.

No more Nutcracker, no more Santa visits, no more hiding gifts since all they want is money. It starts to get a lot more relaxed. There might be a movie on Christmas Day or the day after instead of sugar-filled bedlam.

Christmas gets a lot smaller as you grow older. The kids might still come home, unless they have to go to the in-laws (ouch). The tree and stockings are still there. But now there is just one Christmas tree. Maybe smaller. Every room doesn't have to be decorated. The number of gifts decreases.

No more driving to the mall on a snowy night for last minute shopping when you can now do it all online and have the time to do it well before the 25th.

You can now savor the delight on the faces of your grandchildren. You eat better food. You are calmer. You reminisce about the earlier Christmases when your children were small. But you also realize you really don't wish it all back.

In other words, you have the time, and you take the time, to enjoy your family's company.

Because as you get older it is the gathering itself and the glow of the twinkle lights that make the season. The holidays often become more meaningful. The holidays become a group hug that lasts for days.

The arc of life applies to the holidays as it does to all things. From simple back to simple, with a lot in between.

No matter where you are along that arc today, enjoy the season, the chaos, the calm, and the spirit of giving. Mostly enjoy the time spent with your friends and family and never wish it away.