Creating a Simple, Seasonal Christmas

The Christmas 'shoulds' I've quietly released

Christmas is that time of year when we pile SOOOO much pressure on ourselves for everything to be perfect.

We worry about what other people will think. We feel the pressure to have an instagramable day.

For a long time I was the person writing a Christmas day itinerary and silently seething when no one followed it. I thought I was being organised. Looking back, I was chasing control. And beneath that was something worth unpicking: years of conditioning that said it was my job to make Christmas perfect - not for myself, but for everyone else.

Letting go of that… slowly… has been one of the more freeing things I've done. Here are some of the Christmas 'shoulds' I've quietly released. And let me tell ya, it’s been a game-changer.

In my never-ending pursuit to simplify and calm-ify my life, I’ve released a ton of Christmas-related-pressure, including…

1 | Gift buying

Yup, comin’ in hot with a biggie.

Most of us already have what we truly need. So much of what gets bought each Christmas goes unused, ends up as landfill, or arrives with a side of guilt about the environmental impact it's had along the way.

Around November I send a message to family and friends, something along the lines of: please don't get me anything this year. I'm not buying gifts either. Let's go to the pub for a roast instead.

There's still a small pang. A worry that people will think me grinch-y or strange. But the weight lifted by stepping off the gift-buying treadmill is greater than the discomfort of disappointing expectations.

I mentioned that I do this to a friend, on a blustery Dartmoor walk. He said, ‘I WISH I could do that too’. If that’s what you’re thinking - just know, you really can release this from your Christmas list, if it feels right.

*I will say, I do still give some gifts, but they are only ever handmade - a bar of soap, a bottle of sloe gin, a fabric covered notebook. Handmade gifts just hit different. And, my husband and I still exchange gifts. What can I say, he’s a gift guy.

2 | My husband's family's gifts

My husband's lifes mission is to write cards and send gifts that are so heartfelt it reduces the recipient to tears. He calls this a ‘cry-trap’. He's wonderful at it.

He is less wonderful at remembering dates.

Early on in our relationship I made it clear that managing his family's birthdays and Christmas gifts was not my responsibility. If he forgets his dad's birthday, which has happened, that’s on him!

I hear friends talk about sourcing, buying and wrapping gifts for their partner's entire family and feel genuinely frustrated on their behalf. It’s so often an invisible, unacknowledged labour.

PSA: Grown men are entirely capable of buying gifts.

3 | Faff-y Christmas decorations

It’s allllll fun and games when you’re putting the Christmas decorations up. Taking them down is another matter entirely.

I want a clean slate by New Year, the feeling of a fresh chapter (although I do often keep the twinkly lights up for a bit longer).

Over the years I've simplified things considerably. The tree stays, but for a few years we haven’t bothered with Christmas tree decorations, purely because they are a faff to take down. And I like the tree just with glittering lights.

I also used to hang glitter-coated pinecones on ribbons in our windows. It looked cute, buuuut the drawing pins did not come out of the curtain rail easily. That was the end of that.

4 | Christmas cards

I know they’re nice to send and receive, but honestly… I can’t be arsed.

Enough said.

5 | The pre-Christmas clean

I grew up watching my mother scrub the house to sparkling before extended family arrived at Christmas.

No one mentioned it. I'm not sure anyone noticed. But she felt it had to be done.

Fast forward a few years and I realised she’d passed that unspoken pressure onto me. There I was, scrubbing and cleaning before the in-laws arrived.

Then I realised what was doing and thought… NOPE. Not any more.

Two things have shifted this. First, my husband and I try to clean together so it feels more like a team-job. Secondly, I’ve had to learn to stop caring so much if there’s a dusty windowsill, or the kitchen looks like a bomb’s hit it.

The right guests aren't there to inspect the skirting boards. They're just there to hang out with you.

Christmas traditions I can still be bothered with…

1 | A real tree

I will never understand plastic plants - and that extends to Christmas trees.

We can all agree we think nature is beautiful. We want it in our homes.

So we reinvent it in plastic form? In a form that will at some point end up in a hole in the ground and take millennia to break down? I don’t get it!

I’m team real tree all the way. I love the pine scent and the glittering lights.

But in true anti-Christmas-pressure fashion, I just leave it with the lights only - no decorations. Makes it so much quicker to take down come January.

2 | Christmas dinner

A proper Christmas dinner is worth every bit of effort. Crispy roast potatoes, a prawn cocktail starter (a 70s-vibe tradition in our house), and sprouts - which I will defend enthusiastically to anyone who'll listen.

3 | The cheese board

Christmas isn't really Christmas without a bottle of red and a Mont d'Or cheese warming by the fire.

I love a hot runny cheese, scooped out onto crackers. I love a stinky stilton, all creamy and tangy. I love a mature Cheddar with a bit of chilli jam. The key is to load on as many types of cheeses as the board will hold. This one is non-negotiable.

4 | A foraged wreath

Sometime at the end of November, I head out with a basket, the dogs at my heels, and come back with an armful of whatever the season has to offer.

A wreath made from foraged materials is one of my favourite slow Christmas rituals. The base is woven from willow, and from thee it’s simply a matter of what I can find in the hedgerows - pine branches, holly, mistletoe, and I love to add a bit of old man's beard trailing softly over the edges.

No two wreaths are ever the same. That’s the joy in this seasonal ritual.

Christmas, at its best, is just people celebrating, together. A roaring fire, good food and time slowing down a little. The simpler I've made it, the more I've actually felt re-charged by it.

And there's something quietly radical about opting out of the parts of Christmas that don't serve you, and pouring that energy back into the things that do.

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