Why do so many people get burnt out in the days leading up to Christmas?
Maybe it’s the realization of having to write to everyone you seemingly have ever known. So you sit staring at a pile of countless Christmas cards, that cost a fortune in printing and postage, and realizing that you don’t even have everyone’s addresses, or least not the correct ones. .
Or maybe it’s the present buying, the wrapping, the decorating, the cooking, and everything else. The returns, the fifty different scents in the room at once.
Maybe it’s the expectation of living up to the memories of past Christmas. And maybe just maybe, this is the problem with Christmas for so many people. For many, the heart has gone out of Christmas, which, as everyone keeps repeating, looks like a shopping fest rather than a holy day. Yet we are seemingly driven to fulfill the requirements because of our beliefs or fantasies about what other people feel or expect.
Normally, if your heart has gone out of a situation, you stop. This way you avoid a burnout
But this is more difficult than it seems when it comes to Christmas. Christmas is all around us and bred inside us, and we don’t believe we can break the rules, change the rules, revise, or give it all up. We might not mind but others will. So we soldier on, push ourselves, and hope we will recover by New Year.
If you are feeling great about Christmas, great!! If not, take a deep breath, exhale. Think about what’s really important, then go ahead and enjoy what you are doing, and do as much as you enjoy even if it looks over the top.
The world won’t fall apart, and yes they probably don’t want that fruit cake anyway. Who knows, you may even find the joy that a festive season is meant to be about.
Merry Christmas!!