This is a fun time as well as a stressful time of the year. It is important to establish your boundaries. Release yourself from the need to be all things to all people during this season.
Our time off and vacation time is often limited. It can be a struggle just to spend time with your immediate family. This struggle can increase depending upon the extracurricular activities of each family member.
Compound this with extended family dinners, reunions, spiritual and religious gatherings as well as holiday and work parties. OMG it is madness at its best.
Simplify your life by utilizing your social networks to update everyone. Get creative and share some real quality moments with a video, photo book, or newsletter. Starting a new, more reasonable, tradition that works with your lifestyle. Do not let the threat of holiday blues create in you a cranky, irritable monster.
For those traveling for the holidays, remember you cannot visit everyone that you have not seen all year. Make your visits, quality visits not quantity visits, or you and your family will be the ones to suffer.
Remember the true reasons for all of our holiday traditions are to generate times of love, gratitude, and peace. Keep the main thing, the main thing.