So now there are only two days left until it is once more Christmas. In some countries it is Christmas Eve, the 24th December, which is celebrated the most, in others it is the 25th December and many countries have a holiday also on the 26th December. People come together and traditionally celebrate these holidays together with their families. Thinking of this however gives some people not the happy and jolly feeling that it should. Instead, they feel stress and tension already before the holidays started. Where do such feelings come from and what can you do against them so that you can, for once, enjoy a peaceful Christmas with your family?
This is what everyone wants: a calm, relaxing and joyful time with the people they love. The problem actually comes with the imagination of how this ‘joyful time’ should look like and the expectation that everybody has the same ideas. In order to make this time special and just perfect, many people get into stress.
I have heard of many of my friends, mostly the female ones, that they have so much to do in the house and the kitchen to make it a nice celebration that they cannot really enjoy it. They want to make it pleasant for everyone. There has to be an enourmous Christmas meal which obviously takes hours to prepare as it has to be something special and the whole family will come to eat, often with aunts, cousins and nieces and nephews. The house should be decorated, the Christmas tree at the right place with lights on and present underneath and the children should all be washed, in nice clothes and, if possible, behaving well around their relatives.
On top of all these things that they need to do, there are the relatives that need to be taken care of and who bring their own expectations for the holidays. This is the point where most people actually build up a lot of tension. It is not so much the fact that they have to cook a nice meal – they would do it with joy but there is the expectation of the mother-in-law who knows how she always cooked it when it was her turn. You would love decorating the house or the tree but there is your cousin who had a perfectly decorated house and who is in every other way perfect – so you need to do your job at least as great as he did! And then there are those relatives with whom you actually have no good relation and about whom you don’t even know if you should invite them, if you should even send greetings or not.
In the end, and also such stories I have heard many times, there is one person who is stressed about all the work he or she did before to get it all ready, another one who is upset because another family member criticized his or her work, a family member who does not enjoy anything at all, whatever the reason may be, your partner suddenly behaves all formal and different from his usual self because he is around your father, kids whining for presents while elders want to have a peaceful time and one or the other couple getting into an unpleasant and not very Christmassy discussion about their relationship and their relation to their relatives. This is a Christmas celebration that looks the opposite of what you wished for and expected.
If you want to avoid this, take out stress, tension and pressure. You have to know what you want for Christmas and you cannot make everyone happy. Should there be such a person with whom you don’t really have a connection, accept the situation as it is. Maybe you think that you cannot even wish a Merry Christmas openly because the other one – due to some previous argument – would not take your wishes the way that you want to give them. If you feel like it anyway, do it but if you don’t, just send wishes from your heart, not by post. It is great to celebrate with those with whom you have a loving relation and if this is not the case, tension persists.
Take out pressure and stress also from the preparations. If you don’t want to have to do all work on your own, ask others to help you in cooking or decorating. Explain your family your feeling so that they understand you instead of getting upset about having to do it on your own. You don’t have to be perfect! The main thing is to see the sense of getting together: to celebrate your love. You love each other and that is why you do it, not to impress a family member or to show off your skills. Don’t play a role but simply be yourself. Take off any mask that you might have been wearing because of someone’s expectation. Just relax, look forward to spend time together and plan together with the others so that it can be a relaxed experience for everyone.
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Christmas is a very traditional and special time for my family in the UK but this year was a little different. My grandfather, the head of the family, passed away the week before Christmas (aged 93) so it was a sad time too, especially for my mother and her siblings. Also my children aged 9 and 7 have traveled to Australia with their father to meet his extended family for the first time and it was my first Christmas without them with me. Initially it was a big emotional challenge but I was able to enjoy the day and perhaps give more time to those around me than I normally would. I spent a lot of time worrying and stressing about how I would get through the day without my children but, with the help of my family and knowing that it was not an easy day for them either, we had a wonderful day.