A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 3 – The To-Do List Goes Rogue
December 5, 2020
In Fiona Ferris’s book, A Chic and Simple Christmas, she explores different ways to create a beautiful holiday season that respects and nurtures her needs and preferences. In other words, she has thought about specific holiday activities and expectations that make her feel happy and comfortable and what holiday things make her feel stressed out and exhausted. Like many of us, Fiona would prefer to feel like she has plenty of relaxed time to enjoy the holiday season. Holiday seasons introduce special activities that come in on top of our already existing daily and weekly to-do lists (hint: doing the laundry does not stop for war or holidays.)
One of her suggestions to create “open spaces” in the holiday calendar is to try to reschedule any “life maintenance” activities such as the annual car inspection or dental checkups for another month. That way, we don’t feel as if our month is crammed full of one obligation (no matter how nice) after another.
All of this sounds like a good thing to do (which it is.) I’m trying to implement the idea but life seems to be fighting me on it. My to-do list is pretty modest – no world summits or international treaty discussions in sight. No world leader has ever phoned asking for my opinion on anything.
Even with a pretty low-key life experience, a strange foot thing appeared on one of the children – oops, make a doctor’s appointment. Then Thanksgiving menu changed (again) this morning- no more rotisserie chicken, let’s roast our own (which adds about an hour and a half to the schedule.) And, since we are roasting our own chicken, let’s do the stuffing and sweet potatoes (which had both fallen off the menu to-do list late last night.) And then both children wanted to go select the Christmas tree at Passy Marche after our light lunch (that one addition I was in favor of – I wanted to put up our tree this weekend, too.) (We added a light lunch into the plan due to the Thanksgiving “dinner” unexpectedly moving back 2 hours.) And then the string of lights that we purchased for the tree didn’t have a plug for the string so a quick jog back to Passy Marche to get a working plug…. Whew, just writing this paragraph raises my stress level. As you might imagine, the words “calm” and “relaxed” were not descriptive of how I was feeling from about 10 am – 4 pm. (At one point, I retreated to my bathroom for a 15-minute quiet retreat from the family and noise.) One good thing to note was that my husband and I were able to clean the kitchen (and stovetop) even before we all sat down to eat. Happily for my enjoyment, there was no horrendous kitchen mess to “look forward to” cleaning up after our delicious meal. Nicely, the conversation at the table was fun and humorous. The meal was delicious. The only thing that wasn’t all that fun was that the lead-up was a bit too slap-dash and “last minute” for my preferences.
Looking back over today (and the several days leading up to today), I can see quite a few things that can be done differently that would elevate a holiday day to a happier and calmer experience for me. First of all, make the menu, get family buy-in and don’t deviate from it. Secondly, do all possible “make-aheads” – prepare those dishes that can be made several days in advance. (The cornbread, sweet potatoes and dressing could easily have been cooked a few days ago and then reheated this morning.) The kindest way to put it is that the “organization & planning” part of this festive day & meal was rather weak. Note to self: get the calendar and the to-do lists and my sweetheart and get planning at least 2-weeks before the next big festivity day (which will be Dec 25.)
I think I will go for a short stroll and admire the holiday decorations on the market street and then help string the lights on the tree!
