5 Things You Can Eliminate This Holiday Season

Remember you get to choose how you spend the holiday season. Where will you focus your heart and your efforts? What can you eliminate this holiday season?

As you know, here at Life as Mom we are all about NOT doing things you don’t want or need to do. All too often people, especially women, and especially moms, put more on their plates than they need or want to do.

I am not talking about doing your duty. There are some things you do need to do whether you want to or not. These fall in the line of principles that you’re called to apply to your life.

However, there is a wide range of things that are optional. Things you do not have to do, but that we as women put upon ourselves.

This is especially true at the holiday season.

Let’s take some time now to assess expectations for the upcoming holidays. What can you ELIMINATE?

One of the activities in the Holiday Success Kit is to create a Holiday Success List, the things that you can do to see success during the holidays. We aren’t talking about “success” in the eyes of the world, but rather success according to your family’s values and preferences.

The Holiday Success Kit walks you through the process of identifying what to eliminate from your list of possible to-do’s.

Over the years, with six kids and a very small budget, I’ve learned what I can eliminate without feelings of guilt or trying to impress. None of these impinge on true worship and celebration during the season, but they fall into the optional category.

At first there was some fear and trepidation at NOT DOING things that friends or family members always did. A fear of missing out. A fear of my kids missing out.

However, after weighing what our family actually enjoyed and valued, I found something surprising: freedom.

Yep, freedom not to do the things we didn’t enjoy and freedom to throw myself fully into the things we did!

What can YOU eliminate this holiday season?

While my list may not become your Not-To-Do-List, I hope it will inspire you to think outside the box and create your own list, personalized for you in this life season.

• What’s most important to you for ending 2024?
• What can you do or NOT do that will inspire love and affection with your people this holiday season?
• What is God calling you to do to celebrate Emmanuel and show His love to others?

Become clear on what your Do’s so that you can be clear on your Not-to-Do’s

What I don’t do at the Holidays

Here’s what I unapologetically don’t do…

A formal family photo shoot

Nope, I don’t. I don’t try to get all my kids in one place, in coordinating clothes, with smiles on their faces, all at one time.

I think the stress, frustration, and angry feelings/words that we’ve avoided over the years has far surpassed any joy I “might” have gotten from said photos.

It’s not to say I don’t love a pic of all my people, I do. But, I love having them happy under one roof more.

This is not to say you can’t have both, but the formal activity of family photos isn’t worth it for me, so we skip it.

If you can swing it and keep a smile on everyone’s faces, go for it. But, a group selfie or “ussie” during a family activity is just as valuable — if not more so!

I smile every time I look at our last-minute “ussie” from the beach in Maui before we flew home on Christmas Eve 2019.

Greeting cards

During our first few years of marriage I handmade 100s of cards and included prints of our family to mail out to relatives and friends. I enjoyed the process (except maybe the photo shoot, ahem), and I absolutely loved to get cards in return.

However, over the years the cards felt more and more impersonal and/or sparse in returns in the mailbox. Add to that the increasing cost of paper and postage, not to mention the time to spend out of my already busy life, and the act of sending holiday greeting cards just didn’t pencil out.

The last time I attempted it in 2012 above, I got the cards for free or discounted, but they never got mailed. That’s guilt I can do without. I trashed them finally when we moved last year in 2023!

So, I am happy not to send them. I’m still happy to receive them, but I no longer feel any qualms about recycling the cards I receive once I open them.

Greeting cards are a once-loved tradition that I’m okay with letting go.

The whole turkey

About a decade ago, I came to the amazing conclusion that we don’t really like turkey. At least not the whole roast turkey that we are expected to make every holiday season.

The dark meat always went to waste. No matter how I tried to disguise it in casseroles, no one liked it.

It may have been the year I threw my back out putting a 22-pound turkey in the oven, but at some point along the way I learned that I didn’t have to do it anymore.

At first it seemed like blasphemy, as my friends on Facebook blasted me for the idea of skipping the bird. But, the following year I decided to make a turkey breast instead of a whole roast turkey. I also served a ham and some chicken legs for the kids.

Our menu was a hit, and a new tradition was born!

Two years ago when the oven was broken for all of November, I considered getting rotisserie chickens, but my husband insisted we have turkey in some form. (He also dislikes rotisserie chickens.)

He grilled the turkey breast, and did so several times, in fact, for PBS and for two family Thanksgiving dinners.

We don’t need no stinking turkeys.

The dish your mom always made that you or your family don’t like

Every family has a few things that they always make. Due to her and her husband’s preferences, my mom always made Escalloped Corn, Baked Beans, and a marshmallow pie called Toffee Dream.

I do not like either of the first two dishes, at all. As for the dessert, I like it, but even with my dialing down the sweetness with whipped cream instead of Cool Whip, my husband isn’t a fan. My kids think it’s too sweet as well.

So I don’t make it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

My mom and siblings don’t understand, but that’s okay. Since they have families and extended families of their own, they are rarely diners at my holiday table.

Instead I make what my family loves, such as:

• Raspberry Pretzel Dessert, but with double the cream cheese and no cool whip

• Pumpkin Pie, but with Graham Cracker Crust

• Chocolate Cheesecake, made in the crock-pot

We make what we like and don’t worry about what “keeping with tradition”, especially if it’s not something we absolutely love.

With groceries costing what they do these days, I say focus on the biggest ROI of enjoyment.

The “should” feeling or the need to impress

At the heart of it, the holiday season is really about God and what He values. Thanksgiving is about being grateful for His goodness while Christmas is to celebrate when God came down to dwell among us.

Neither feast should include feelings of “should” or a desire to impress. Both are about being honest about oneself with God and with others.

• If you’re feeling like you should do something just because it’s the holiday season, check that feeling. Why do you feel that? Is it based on something true and good? Or something else?
• If you’re feeling the pressure to pull out all the stops and impress people, whether or not you have the money/time to do it, check yourself. What is that about? Do you need to talk to someone like your husband or a friend to figure it out? Email me if you want an impartial sounding board.

Are you being honest about yourself and what brings your family joy and peace this season? If not, spend some time reflecting on what’s most important right now.

That’s what should dictate your To-Do List.

You might not love my list of what to eliminate, and that’s okay! It’s not your list. It’s mine.

I do encourage you to think about what YOU want to do this season — and forget about the things you don’t.

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