The holidays are a stressful time. Just kidding. They are easy and you are weak. Try harder. Here are 10 tips to help you suck it up and make everything special or you can die trying. Those are your only options.
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1. Go Dead Inside
Look, as long as you get good pictures, who cares how you actually feel about the holidays? So smile! Make at least one Instagram-worthy cookie. Guilt your children into smiling around the Christmas tree for a picture. Then, Photoshop the hell out of it and convince people that is how you spent Christmas, instead of boozing up your coffee and listening to your mother suggest that you prefer your husband’s family, because you were there for four days over Thanksgiving.
2. Xanax
Kind of like the above tip, but with medical assistance.
3. Meditate
When things get stressful, take a deep breath and imagine the Elf of the Shelf. Now, imagine him drowning in a sea of gravy and you just stand on the shore, eating a cookie, not helping him. Feel better? I thought so.
4. Take It All Out on Your Spouse
Every time the kids whine about not getting an iPad or your relatives get passive aggressive, just bottle up your rage and then take it all out on your husband. When he decides he doesn’t want to pose with lights across his bare chest for your annual Christmas photo, just start screaming and sobbing about him making the baby Jesus sad. You’ll feel better and get that photo. Win and win.
5. Try Harder
Christmas is a complete failure unless you have tinsel in every freaking corner of your house!
Look, I know you think you are near your breaking point, but that’s because you aren’t trying hard enough. See those cookies on Pinterest? Those look better than yours. Sure, you are making a pie, but you could be making a pie and cake, layered together! That’s right. You didn’t think of that because you are a slacker. Get back to work. Christmas is a complete failure unless you have tinsel in every freaking corner of your house!
6. Refuse All Help
Sure, it’s nice that your neighbor wants to watch your kids while you do some last-minute shopping, but why let her when you can do it all at midnight? If you let her help, then she will know you are a failure and might suspect that your cookies were store-bought. (They were, I know they were. Stop lying to me.) Suck it up. You can sleep when you are dead on January 1.
7. Practice Acceptance
It’s time to accept that if you don’t work really hard during the holidays, your kids will not experience the magic of the season and will probably knock over a liquor store in February. The judge will surely sentence them to life in prison, but not before lamenting that if only their mother had given them a truly magical holiday season, they would not feel compelled to seek love by robbing for whiskey. Accept this is your fault. Accept your destiny.
8. Stick to Your Guns
Sure, your family is tired and would rather spend a cozy night in, watching movies. But you planned on family caroling, so you better make everyone carol. Don’t be flexible. Don’t adapt. Don’t change. This isn’t some made-up holiday like Memorial Day, this is Christmas! Kids have the flu? Who cares! Go to the tree farm and cut down that perfect tree. Husband in the hospital? Suck it up buddy, it’s time for everyone to look at Christmas lights.
9. Be a Martyr
Look, no one will think of you at all while you run around spreading holiday cheer. So, do your best to martyr yourself on that cross. Sigh and cry. Say passive aggressive things like, “I work to hard making holiday magic to experience it myself,” or “That’s OK, Santa doesn’t come for mommies.” This, after all, is the reason for the season.
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10. Go Big or Go Home
Jesus didn’t come to earth as a baby for you to phone it in on Christmas. Simplicity? That’s for atheists. Step up your game. The holidays aren’t truly special unless you bankrupt yourself financially and morally to give your child every gift wrapped in homemade burlap and tied with the organic tears of orphans. Did you make the tape yourself? Nope. Try again.
