Opening up a little tab and finding a chocolate to eat, a promise that you are one day closer to Christmas—it was the way to spread anticipation and joy during December. Enough people loved their candy advent calendars that companies began to capitalize on this and reinvent the advent.
Today, you can get a calendar with candy, or you can get a calendar with jewelry, panties, makeup, legos, Pokémon cards, and a megalous amount of different things. My partner and I like to buy each other advent calendars as early presents, and this year I got the perfect one: a novel.
A romance novel. Yes, each chapter ends with an “I like you” or a kiss and I’m forced to wait until the next day to find out what happens. Torture! And I love it.
This book motivated me to go to bed earlier and give myself time to unwind. I relished in this time so much that I began to find other ways to relax (you know, longer than the fifteen minutes of reading).
Cracking open a Christmas coloring book, I grabbed a marker and started filling its pages. My partner joined me with his own coloring book, and in the background we played a Christmas movie. Soon we had this wonderful routine: at 8 PM we went to bed and we colored, read, and relaxed.
Stress is kind of a year-round thing for many people. Should we be unwinding in March or June? Yeah—you know this, I know this. Yet, people obliviate this fact all the time. It becomes especially easy to push aside self-care during the classic hustle and bustle of the holidays.
There are so many fun activities and unfun obligations and never-ending tasks to complete to make the best Christmas ever. This lead up can make this time of the year more folly and less jolly. Ultimately, it ends up detracting from the cheery day itself.
So, I felt extra grateful that I had my novel to motivate me to set aside that time for myself.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that there might be one perfect, universal holiday calendar that people need. A homemade advent calendar: Once a day, slow down and do some self-care.
This could be anyone’s ultimate, one and only go-to. It could also be an addition to whatever advent calendar one would usually prefer. The great part about it? It’s not a financial burden because it’s free.
Set up a system where each day you discover a self-care activity you have a “prescription” for. That’s right, doctor’s orders. You must take care of yourself.
You can make this as creative or straight forward as possible. Craft a cute advent house or plug reminders into your phone. Whether you discover your new daily relief through a calendar notification or a piece of paper stuck behind a door that says “3”, it doesn’t matter. Do what works for you.
Select 12–24 activities that will help reduce your stress and benefit your overall health. You can plan exactly what days will work best for these activities, or you can randomize it. Then make the time for them, whenever you need it the most. For me, that’s been at the end of the night.
Want to make it extra festive and fun? Make it holiday themed!
If you need ideas for December self-care, here’s a list:
- Coloring
- Reading
- Strolling past Christmas lights
- Painting
- Extra time spent on skin care
- Soothing bath
- Make a simple, special treat
- Watch a movie in your PJs
- Meditate
- Do something for your body—stretch, do yoga, go to the chiropractor
- Drink hot cocoa and watch a guilty pleasure
- Dance around to fa-la-la music
There’s a lot of options. Find what you love and what you can let loose doing.
At the same time, check in with yourself while you do these activities. For me, it was a few nights in when the coloring turned into a stress inducer instead of a releaser. It had become an obligation, a duty. I saw all these uncolored pages and felt they were a burden.
So I stopped coloring. I focused more on reading other books instead. And then eventually I got to a place where I felt coloring would be relaxing and returned to it.
Look, there a lot of movies, shows, and people that advocate for not getting so stressed during the holidays. Don’t get carried away with the shopping nor the amount of things you need to do. Remember the meaning of it all.
That’s a nice message, but it doesn’t really provide a pathway on how to achieve those things. So, while this post is coming halfway through December, I hope it still helps for this month and for future jolly seasons to come. This advent calendar is one cluster of bricks in a path that leads to a more relaxing, enjoyable holiday.
May your days be merry and stress-free as you make time each day to take care of yourself. (And don’t forget why you’re celebrating this year.)
Read MRC 