Today is day 1 of my Best Christmas Ever

I received a brochure in the mail today that announced in big, beautiful letters:

The Best Christmas Ever!

Apparently, all you needed were to make purchases of their products and the discount you receive would make everything better.

Of course, we all know that buying doesn't Christmas make.

But it piqued my curiosity about what WOULD make it the Best Christmas Ever...   Despite my current household chaos, I really gave this some thought as I ate my lunch.

I always plan for each Christmas to be wonderful (don't we all?) but sometimes in my effort to get Christmas 'just right' or even (gasp!) 'Perfect', I really go overboard and not only run myself ragged, but alienate the very people who I think I am doing it all for.

Off the top of my head, some of the things that would make this the Best Christmas Ever include

• forgetting perfection and enjoy each moment right through December
• letting go of the need to control everything (my kids will laugh their heads off at this one)
• giving my attention to people I care about rather than to things like baking or decorating or shopping
• being a model of how I'd like my children to be at this special time of year (which means putting away the panic, the chaos, the sheer exhaustion of Christmases Past...)

Now I'd like to throw the question out to YOU.  When you get to Boxing Day, how will you know if it's been the Best Christmas Ever?

What could you do today, right now, that would take you a step in that direction?

Please leave us a comment, or send an email to SaveXmas@gmail.com... we'd really love to know your thoughts on this.

---

Karen Wallace and Chris Owen are your Christmas Calm Angels, and are on a mission to save the world from going crackers at Christmas... or at least one or two frantic souls.  You can answer the questions Karen asks in the post above in the spirit of providing us with further research towards future editions of Save Our Sanity: The Christmas Calm Manual.