Mama, You Don’t Have to Save Christmas

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For many years, Christmas was a struggle. Christmas decorations in a too-small house, buying gifts on a too-small budget, and traveling to visit family on a too-short timeline. Healthcare doesn’t slow down for the holidays, so time off was hard to come by. I didn’t have the luxury of slowing down to reflect on the joy of the season. It was more like squeezing the joy in on top of everything else that went on. Even in the years that I didn’t work, it still felt like I was stretched too thin during the holidays.

As I reflect, a few of the pressures many mothers deal with weren’t a factor for me. I was a blogger from the time my youngest was a toddler, but social media was in its infancy. You didn’t know what your friends were doing for the holidays unless they specifically told you. One of my parents grew up in a Christian tradition that did not view Christmas as a religious holiday, so I didn’t feel pressure to celebrate Christmas in a particular way.

But even though the stressors many young moms face were absent for me, I always seemed to face the holiday season in a state of low-key panic that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I certainly have bigger regrets as a mother, but I do wish I could go back and tell my younger self to take a deep breath.

There Is No Right Way to Celebrate Christmas

As I mentioned before, there are sections of Christianity that don’t observe Christmas as a church. Many families, as my extended family did, celebrated it personally, but it was viewed as tradition and fun rather than a religious mandate. I am not going to debate the merits of this, but there is nothing in Scripture that commands us to observe the Savior’s birth in December. Baptism and communion, yes. Christmas is up to us.

Your Children Will Remember More—and Less—Than You Think

I didn’t do a formal survey of my now-adult children, but I’ve often been surprised by the things they remember about Christmas. The cheese ball that I threw together because it was easy? It has become a family holiday staple. The trip to see family that always seemed frantic and rushed? It’s integral to all their memories. But most of all, they remember the anticipation and the time together. If they remember a stressed-out, anxious mom, they are all too kind to say so.

And yes, they remember the gifts, too. But while there are a couple of big gifts that left an impression, one big gift was a flop. One child had a year where every gift he received either didn’t work or broke quickly. I doubt it’s his favorite Christmas memory, but he survived.

Christmas Is the Best Time for Moms to Remember the Real Meaning of Christmas

When we talk about the real meaning of Christmas, we usually mean the birth of the Savior as opposed to Santa Claus and gifts. And while that is certainly correct, the real meaning of Christmas is far more than that.

At its heart, Christmas means man needed divine intervention. The Savior had to come and live the life we couldn’t live and die the death we should have died. We can’t save ourselves, and we certainly can’t save our children.

As grievous as it is that the Savior’s birth has been commercialized into a day of consumption, it is ironic that the day that should remind us that we can’t do it all has become the season where we try to do too much. We can become overwrought and frantic trying to buy the perfect gifts, but we can also stress ourselves out trying to put Christ back into Christmas.

The default mode when we feel stressed as moms seems to be “do more and try harder.” The Christmas season, with all the extra events on our calendars, seems to bring that out in us even more. So while we are remembering the Savior in the manger, we need to throw ourselves at the feet of the Savior at the cross. If we could do it all at Christmas, he wouldn’t have needed to come and save us. Remember that, mama, and hug your babies. They, and you, are precious in his sight.

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