Joyful Festive Season Guide

This is a guide to a stay-at-home festive season, with ideas and prompts for a joyful, connected and peaceful time with family. While this year is likely to look very different to previous years, it creates space for us to be conscious about what we choose to take with us and what we choose to leave behind. Change is so often uncomfortable for us, but it also stretches us and gives us a chance to look at how we do things in a fresh way. Are you ready for a heap of restorative, joyful moments this festive season!? I know I am!

What this guide covers

• A realistic look at why celebration days can be so charged, checking in with our expectations of these

• Journal prompts for your own reflection and preparation

• Activity ideas

• Making a family JOY list

Expectations about what family time ‘should’ look and feel like

Families are made up of so many moving parts. Imagine a family as a solar system, made up of planets each with their own substance, personality and plans. However, unlike planets, we can’t rely on predictable orbit patterns as we’re all constantly changing and evolving - this means that friction is to be expected and is entirely unavoidable! Finding ways ways to make peace with conflict being a normal part of life can take some of the pressure off and leave a bit of room to start doing conflict well, rather than avoiding it.

Doing conflict well means allowing the idea of conflict into our idea of relationships, and knowing that conflict is an important part of healthy relationships. Let this really sink in… there is no healthy relationship without conflict. For many of us, this can feel liberating just to hear as so many of us are taught to believe that conflict is bad, and that happiness and constant harmony should be our goal. We might have been told to ‘calm down’, ‘don’t get cross’ and ‘smile’ instead of having had space to express our distress or frustration - Ugh! This means that any experience outside of this tiny slice of human emotion can lead to feelings of shame and guilt. ‘I shouldn’t be feeling like this’ or that this part of us is unacceptable to others or ourselves, and we should keep quiet about it.

It’s not just conflict that this way of viewing human experience messes with, it even interferes with moments of joy! If we subscribe to the idea that happiness is the goal for life then moments of joy become undermined – because they’re not long enough, or powerful enough, or stable enough. 

If we start to think of the likelihood of each member of our family solar system feeling the same best-day-ever-feeling at any point in time, we begin to realise how small the chances of this ever happening actually are (let alone coinciding with an annual holiday, and even more family members thrown into the mix!) These are not great odds, and when we start to look at things in this way it can free us up to be ready for moments of joy, as well as moments of conflict, boredom or mundanity. 

When we make room for ALL the feelings, allowing that they may appear at anytime, especially for young children, we take some of the pressure off any given day being the very best day of our lives. Again, what a relief! Once we’ve adjusted our expectations in a realistic way, we’re more likely to be able to respond to our family’s emotional experiences with empathy knowing that just like joy – sadness, anger, jealousy, are normal and don’t last forever.

Now, allow me a teeny bit of geekery by looking at how our biology plays into big days like holidays. Human brains are only considered fully developed when we are around 25 years old, and the last area to develop is the frontal cortex which is responsible for planning, the ability to inhibit impulses, and predict consequences. We know that asking a toddler to be surrounded by chocolate and not to eat every last piece in a sitting, is beyond what they are developmentally capable of, and that even older children use a great deal of energy to inhibit behaviours.

Consider too that our bodies, of all ages, read excitement and fear in the same way – that is we have the same brain and body responses to these experiences and while we might be able to mediate this internally as adults, this is incredibly unlikely in children which is why we are all too familiar with the birthday melt-down or festival overwhelm. What if we consider that these responses are normal and natural, and that we all need more empathy, and more conscious emotional regulation support on these days.

Journal/Reflection points

• What do these days evoke for us? What smells, sounds, feelings, textures, taste memories are we reminded of on celebration days?

• What are the layers of our experience surrounding days like this? What do we have lurking in the emotional wings of our minds that we might rather not look at?. What was the feeling in our homes before/during/after celebration days?

• Losses are often felt more acutely at these times, that’s okay, but make space for this rather than jollying these out of our awareness. It's normal that these feelings and memories arise during annual celebrations and it's important to hold space for them.

• What parts of our experiences do we want to share with our children, and how can we more consciously prepare to do this without putting pressure on them to enjoy celebrations in exactly the same way as we remember them?

How to make celebration days relaxed and connected

• Keep expectations low and developmentally appropriate

• Don’t plan too many activities & remember that transitions are often times of overwhelm

• Plan a mid-way walk or time outside, even if the weather isn't great.

• Consider the impact of hunger on small children (and adults!) and make sure you have snacks to hand if meals are later than usual

• Make time for rest

• Make time for physical connection and cuddles with children, this will help them to regulate their emotions and calm their nervous systems

• Let everyone get involved in decision making so family members are not living out one member’s ideal image of festival days.

• Try not to catastrophize things not going to plan.

If festive days are particularly triggering for you, take some time to prepare and plan for this emotionally and practically. For instance you might know these days act as a reminder of family members who have died, or underline family relationships that are strained and disconnected – be realistic about this and make sure you are nurturing your body as well as planning at least one top-up activity. This might look like a wintery walk before you begin the day, or carving out 30 mins to read your book, meditate, have a long bath or do some journalling.

Create a family joy list together

 Spend some time a few weeks before your celebration day to make a list together. Light a candle, make some hot chocolate and brain-storm some ideas of things you can do together that you ALL enjoy (this is really key) - it doesn't need to be long. You could all decorate a piece of card with these written down and stick it up somewhere that's easily visible. Children love having agency around planning and contributing, so let them have freedom here. This also means you can ask them to refer back to the list at times of overwhelm/boredom and pick something they would like to do.

Some ideas…

• A muddy winter walk in wellies

• A candlelit day bath with a bath bomb for overstimulated kids (& you!)

• Start a new celebration day tradition - winter swim anyone?

• Acts of kindness (think community here)

• Playing a game that focuses on laughs rather than winning

Keep in mind that we remember how we felt on days like this, rather than how well the carrots were cooked so let go of the idea that things need to be perfect and allow yourself to be ready to really connect and delight in the experiences of the day. 

I hope this has been useful, feel free to drop me an email with your thoughts or if you'd like to ask any questions.