Taking the Pressure Off Christmas Day
It’s Christmas! All the work you put into decorating, cooking and wrapping is finally going to be enjoyed and systematically undone in the blink of an eye! It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
FoodFam, I love Christmas Day, but the more work I put into making the holidays memorable (and weaving in everyone’s favorite holiday traditions), the more I need to prep prep prep prep prep. Thanksgiving is arguably easier because it’s a single day of hosting/eating/celebrating with a collective sigh at the end of the meal. “The Holidays” can last almost six weeks if you start singing carols as soon as the turkey carcass is being cooked down into stock and don’t stop fa-la-la-ing until that hair-of-the-dog champagne cocktail on New Year's Day.
For a lot of us, the holidays feel very different this year. Cities are shutting back down and extra precautions are being taken to keep everyone as safe as possible, including limiting travel and and contact with particularly vulnerable family and friends. And that’s a huge adjustment- my favorite part of the holidays is celebrating every family tradition possible with my favorite people, and it’s OK to be sad that we may not be able to do all of that this year.
I know that if I’m feeling this way, someone else out there probably is too and I thought I’d share three ways that I’m going to celebrate without feeling lost or guilty because it doesn’t look exactly the way I had planned:
Breathe. This is the hardest. But breathe in as deeply as you can (even if this doesn’t feel very deep at all) and take a moment to say, This Sucks. And when you exhale, remind yourself that it’s OK to have these feelings. We’re going to need to make adjustments this year: make video calls, use those recipe hacks if you’re suddenly in charge of Christmas dinner and DIY whatever you can if you’re not celebrating at your usual spot this December. I exercise in the mornings so I can leave (some) anxiety in my rearview mirror: take a walk, stream a bodyweight workout online, take an extra long shower, anything to let your body heat up and sweat. Remember: every breath and every step propels you forward.
Give yourself a break with the big holiday meal, especially if your cohort is smaller than in years past. I know this is a strange bit of advice to add on a cooking blog, but ditch your laborious plans for a leg of lamb or massive turkey and focus on spending time together. Go all in for a massive take-out order from your favorite spot: restaurants appreciate seeing their favorite guests around the holidays and it’s especially during this time when doors are being shuttered right and left due to crowd restrictions. I love ordering every possible dim sum option from my favorite joint and letting everyone enjoy the smorgasbord at their leisure. Leftovers can be easily stored and enjoyed the following day. My Mum’s family is Jewish and we lean into the tradition of Chinese food and movies during Christmas, so why not order in, give a nice tip, have a movie marathon of your favorite films? Trust me, it’s hard not to smile when debating if Die Hard should really count as a holiday movie. And no, it really doesn’t, but as long as I can get in Home Alone, The Muppets Christmas Carol and Meet Me In St. Louis, I’m willing to be flexible!
3. Celebrate being cozy together at home: for us, this means bringing enough firewood inside so that we don’t need to battle icy conditions day-of. Some families open new pajamas sets on Christmas Eve and pop them in the dryer for 20 minutes to make them nice and toasty. If you have a Christmas Day breakfast, prep this out the night before so that you can assemble or cook everything the next morning like a pro (and maybe enjoy a cheeky Christmas coffee for a fa-la-la-la-festive start to a federal holiday!). Have a few movies you know are ready to stream on your platform of choice for the age ranges in your home (and balance whomever insists on watching Die Hard with a healthy dose of Elf and The Charlie Brown Christmas Special).
It’s the strangest time to be recommending that we don’t pull out all the stops and tackle the most challenging recipes, but if there is one thing we can control in 2020, it’s that we don’t need to take on anything that’s distracting us from spending time with the people we love the most. That might be via phone or video chat, but I certainly don’t want to miss any of those calls because I’m trying to cook a massive spread for just three people this year.
Celebrate in all the ways you can and remember: we can only control what we can control, so take another ooey-gooey bite of those homemade cinnamon buns and remember: you’ve got this and you’re doing awesome.
Happy Holidays, FoodFam!
