Do you remember when you were a kid and 1st of December finally was here, the beginning of the Christmas month that everyone loved. A month full of joy and excitement for a child, although on 1st of December it was still 24 days until Christmas Eve which then felt like an eternity. As we grow older and busier it became easier and easier to make that time pass and it even starts to create some stress because of everything we have to do and the financial pressure because of all the gifts we have to buy. That pure joy related to Christmas that we had as a child has become a bit of a love-hate relationship towards the holiday. Is that really how it’s supposed to be?
Christmas is a holiday that is about giving and spending time with your loved ones (can differ between different cultures), but do we lose the essence of Christmas in all the stress? Are we doing it wrong? Why can’t we feel the pure joy that we did as a child? There are two aspects that differs form when we were children, time and money. As a child we had what felt like an endless amount of time and waiting for Christmas was a struggle. When I was a child I made a schedule with different fun activities to fill the day before Christmas to make it pass faster. As a grown up the time is a lot more restricted which means that we really need to make sure that we use it the right way. Are we spending too much time searching for more and more gifts to buy? Are we engaging in too many activities? Maybe we should filter out some things that causes more stress than joy and just take one day to schedule fun activities to make the time pass in joy.
The second aspect, money, can put a huge pressure on our financial situation. Looking back at our childhood we had no pressure of buying expensive gifts to our family because it simply wasn’t possible with the money we had in our piggy bank. It is easy to find something that everyone likes when the price tag increases, but with our limited resources we needed to be creative and put some heart into the process to find a great gift for the person we were giving to. What would happen if we try to limit our budget for Christmas gifts and instead put more thought into the present or try to find something that isn’t material or cost money. Could it be more valuable to give a bit of our time instead of something material?
Steve Jobs found more value in his time than whatever he could buy, would it be possible that we could spend a happier Christmas similar to what we felt as a child without longing for physical things but instead being excited about what we can do with our time and who we will spend it with?
