If walking through the aisles of Christmas stuff at Target or Hobby Lobby at Christmastime makes you feel overwhelmed, this is for you! At the risk of sounding like a Grinch with the middle name of Scrooge, I’m sharing this video below.

If you don’t feel any stress about prepping for Christmas, stop right here. Go read something else. But if you do feel stress about Christmas, keep reading and watch the video. It features the Minimal Mom of YouTube with Rachel Cruze, daughter of financial guru Dave Ramsey. It feels so freeing to embrace all of this!

Yeah, when I watched this video, I felt so affirmed. I haven’t done most of those things in the video for years! I feel so ahead of the “simplify Christmas” game! Below are the chief points from the video. Basically, I agree with the whole video except for not doing stockings. Here are the things in the video that I especially agree with, plus some of my own points:

No baking. OK I had that strict rule when I had a ton of little kids. It was just too stressful as a homeschooling mom of a lot of littles. Some moms can juggle baking with homeschooling, or have it be part of homeschooling, but it was just too hard for me when they were all little. As they got older, I did bake cookies and other treats to send to my missionary sons. Now that I’m keto, mostly carnivore, I encourage the teenage kiddos to do their own baking if they want treats. They are welcome to find any recipe they want (within reason) and show it to me, and I will buy the ingredients if they will bake it. If I’m baking, it’s because I’m making something sugar-free for my mom and me to eat, like a pumpkin cheesecake or pie. (She has always been naturally thin so doesn’t need to be keto or carnivore but has always been allergic to sugar. It makes her sick.)

No gingerbread house kits. I held to this at least when they were little. Once the younger half were older, like ages 8-14, I finally got one. Then Big Sister home from college for Christmas break helped with it which was a win/win. The purist in me has learned to be OK with the “cheating” method of just using graham crackers. Maybe I’ll do that with the grands sometime.

No matching pajamas. If I had had the money for this in previous years I would have done it as it is adorable. I actually have the money this year, but I’d rather spend it on more important items like beefing up my long-term food storage. If you have the money and time for this, go for it but it’s not worth stressing over it if you don’t. Your children won’t be harmed for never having received matching pajamas for Christmas.

No formal family photo. We sometimes get an informal one done with a family friend or relative as the photographer, and do it when we happen to be all together at Thanksgiving or Christmas, which becomes a major feat when they start going off to college. I don’t stress about it in the months before Christmas to get it done in time for a Christmas card. That leads me to the next point…

No Christmas cards. I do enjoy receiving them, keeping them, and displaying them. Someday I hope to carve out the time to send these. It seems like a lovely tradition. I used to do a family newsletter with cards, LOL, back in 1998! I love the idea of annually chronicling the whole year of my family with a newsletter, like Jennifer Flanders does over here. It’s just been hard for me to fit this into the pre-Christmas bustle AND the budget. I’ve compromised by doing an email newsletter to save on postage and cards, and sending it out for New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day or Easter, or just any day really, when I’m not nearly as stressed. It doesn’t have to be a holiday to send out a family newsletter.

Simple decorations (meaning no live tree), with kids putting out all the decorations as much as possible. For over 20 years, it’s been my kiddos who bring out our artificial tree and decorate it. When they aren’t looking, LOL, I hide the homemade ornaments that aren’t so pretty in the back. I know the crunchy mom thing is to get a live tree from the pristine woods as we breathe the fresh mountain air, but I don’t like going out in the cold, watering the tree, or cleaning up the needles. I know my artist sister is probably crying over this, as she loves the yearly family trek to get the live tree. To each her own!

No neighbor gifts. I’ve appreciated receiving these over the decades but never felt like I had the time or money to do this. I love seeing the fun little puns with the accompanying little gifts like “We whisk you a Merry Christmas” with a kitchen whisk. If you can afford this, go for it, but please don’t feel pressure to give them. Some neighborhoods have a thing going where everyone does this, like with one of my sisters, such that it almost seems like a competition to see who can come up with the most clever gift. I’m blessed that I’ve never had that pressure.

No special Christmas clothes. I’m blessed in that I haven’t had a ton of daughters who insist on a special Christmas dress or any daughters who did. (I have two. It would have been fun though, I admit, since I’m a girly girl.) I’ve received little outfits like the one my grandma sewed for my firstborn, but I haven’t had the time or money to keep up the tradition to sew or buy them after she passed away. I guess I could have had fun thrifting my way to collect outfits all year long, but I never got into it and now they are almost all grown. As my sister-in-law is wont to say, “They will never know what they missed.”

No teacher gifts. When you homeschool the pressure to do this goes down dramatically. I suggest giving the teacher a heartfelt note of gratitude. It’s free! I’ve loved it when the children at my homeschool co-op gave me a card or note signed by the child. If you really want to give a material thing and can afford it, a gift card is probably the best idea. One year some children in my co-op gave me and all the other teachers amazing traveler mugs with straws. I’m grateful for that gesture and the thought put forth by the mom but want no mom to feel pressure to give teachers material gifts.

Scented candles. I do have a few scented Christmas candles, but they have all been given to me. I haven’t bought a single one. We do use candles for my Immanuel Wreath, as shown above and below with the the names of Christ, but they are not scented. Since we use this wreath for every Easter and every Christmas, the candles do have to be replaced about every other year. (Read about the Immanuel Wreath advent tradition here.) I love that the Immanuel Wreath activity takes the place of the trinkets involved in a trinket-based Advent Calendar. We light the candle at dinner or at family prayer time before bed, if not everyone was home at dinner, look up the scriptures associated with the name of Christ, and discuss how Jesus shows up in our life with that name. That leads me to the next point.

No trinket-based Advent Calendars. The math involved with making the trinkets divided up fairly in a big family makes my head spin. I’m grateful I haven’t ever dealt with this. We’ve consistently used one Advent Calendar through the years that doesn’t involve candy or trinkets. It emphasizes the birth of Christ instead of Santa. See above. You can get it through Storytime Felts over here, although it is currently out of stock. Every day, you advance the cutout of the Mary/Donkey and Joseph figures one space, to get closer to the stable. Then on Christmas Day you swap those figures out for Nativity cutout with the Baby Jesus. I’ve had it since the oldest two children were one and three. It must have made a great impression because one of my married children was just asking recently where he could get it. We’ve often read a book to accompany the movement of Mary and Joseph on the calendar. We’ve also done the Picture Book Advent, which you can read about here. Now that my youngest is 15 we just read a book or two a day for Morning Basket without making a big deal about it like I did when they were younger.

I have a minor quibble about the mention in the video of not stuffing stockings. Both moms in the video say they don’t do stockings. I agree that filling stockings can be stressful if you use tons of candy and useless junk that just end up on the floor, creating a mess that someone, often you as mom, cleans up and tosses into the garbage. I love the tradition of stuffing them, though, with useful, joyful things. I’m not willing to let go of them. So, I do more whole foods-y candy, like the Wellness Mama talks about over here, and put it all in a Ziploc bag in the stocking, with the child’s name on it. I also add mixed nuts (also in a Ziploc bag) to add some salt and protein, along with oranges or clementines. Then I do small toys that are durable and fun, like Jacob’s Ladders, mini-puzzles, card games, quiz games or decks, and useful stuff like miniature tape measures or flashlights. You can get ideas for all that here, just scroll down to the bottom of the list under mention of the food. This mom of 8 also has two videos below full of practical, useful, non-junky items.

Here are other things I don’t do for Christmas:

1. Take the children to sit on Santa’s lap. When you think about it, it is creepy to take your children to sit on a stranger’s lap, and it encourages them to focus on receiving not giving.
2. Go to a ton of parties. We usually have the church Christmas party, our homeschool co-op party (but we aren’t part of a co-op this year so that’s out) and our extended family party on Christmas Day. I hosted a Jolabokkaflod (Christmas book flood) party last year for a small family group, and my Veggie Gals, and hope to host those this year. I’m in a different season of life though. When I was a young mom I wouldn’t have done those.
3. Buy a ton of presents. We do the Three Gifts Tradition/Rule for each child, which I explain over here. Now that three out of my seven children are married, I am just getting one present for each married child. Each grandchild, married child, and child-in-law will get one gift but the children not married will each still get three, according to the Three Gifts Tradition.

So…what happens when one simplifies Christmas by subtracting the stuff I talked about I above? I promise, like it says in the video, Christmas is still fun! I have felt more peace, more sleep, more joy, and had more time to read aloud to my children, which is my favorite Christmas tradition, apart from giving gifts.

For my read aloud suggestions of Christmas books, go here or here. We also have some of our favorite Christmas movies, which I list here. I have even more activities here, under the activities heading for December, but please, as they say in La Leche League, take what works for your family, and leave the rest. It’s impossible to do them all!