I’m all for enjoying the holiday spirit well and early. We respectfully dug our holiday boxes out of the garage the day after Thanksgiving and had our lights up the next day. We did our Black Friday shopping from the comfort of our home while decorating the fireplace and placing holiday trinkets around the house.
The decorations are out and the Christmas countdown has begun.
I gaze around at all of the ornaments three feet off the ground, lights plugged into electrical outlets, and small breakables, and I start to think about why we really do this to ourselves so early. We are all so eager to enjoy the holiday spirit as soon as it’s socially appropriate, but what we really do is set ourselves up as parents for constant nagging and frustration.
Is the Christmas countdown for us or for our kids?
Because I’m having a hard time figuring out what the end result is when we fight over the Nutcrackers for different reasons. I want to look and enjoy them…and my son wants to see if they work with rocks.
As much as I enjoy the twinkling lights and Santa figurines it really comes down to one thing. By decorating and celebrating a month in advance that means the more times I’ll have to threaten to cancel Christmas.
It’s already happened three times today and I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to keep it up.
The little people in our lives get more excited about Christmas than we do. My countdown to Christmas Day started in the mid 30’s and that was a daunting number. And it’s a hard concept for a toddler to grasp that Christmas isn’t today, or even tomorrow. In fact, at press time Christmas isn’t even for another three weeks.
Everyday my son asks if it’s Christmas yet and every day I have to threaten to cancel it.
I know we all do it because we love our children and want them to enjoy the Christmas spirit for as long as possible. I totally got tree farm FOMO when I saw the holiday posts starting the day after Thanksgiving. Fast forward to the day after Christmas and all you want to do is banish Christmas back to the garage and get your house back to “normal.”
You eagerly pack away the breakables and feel a sigh of relief that the snow angels survived another toddler Christmas.
Of course the ornament casualty list is always disheartening but everything can be replaced. No more “don’t touch, I’m telling Santa and takes the lights off.” Peace can be restored.
Next year I am reevaluating the holiday rollout plan and making other threats readily available.
Although you would think that threatening to cancel Christmas for at least 30 days would make them question if it is happening or not. I would expect my children to show model behavior. But we all know that’s impossible. For now we take one day at a time and the anticipation will grow for both of us towards Christmas Day.
This is fantastic. It’s exactly how I feel and it doesn’t help that stores push christmas as soon as halloween is over.
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