I made the conscious decision to epically fail this Christmas and here's why

What were your first thoughts about Christmas as a child?

And now, what do you think of when you think about Christmas as an adult?

I did this exercise recently and I caught myself associating Christmas with crisp cold weather, twinkling lights, and a hemorrhaging bank account.

I then realised that I find myself year on year losing sight of the true and magical meaning of Christmas and tumbling further into the commercial money pit that preys on the belief that my nearest and dearest would not know how much I love them if I did not buy them that one extra gift. You know the gift, the talking pink scarf that tells you your relative (who most likely has no idea it exists) she must have or Christmas will be ruined - or, the majorly expensive blowing of the budget brand item telling you off-brand would ruin the entire day as well as the catalyst to the apocalypse. Those gifts.

However, after a 2020 that consisted of:

• moving to a new house

• effects of covid on work

• significant sickness

• severe anxiety and depression

• far too much change

• loss of the internal filter

I took back control of December and chose to fight the good fight for a devil may care attitude against the commercial Christmas Krampus's of the marketing world.

And this is how I did it:

Firstly, I made a list, checked it twice (see what I did there) of who I will be seeing over the Christmas period. From there, I identified who I will be buying presents for, revised my budget, and cut off dates for delivery. These were my priority gift receivers - and in fairness, an exhaustive list was reduced from double digits to seven. Everybody else, I will deal with in January and maybe February if I can’t realistically see them over the holidays.

Secondly, I called time on the will they won't they debate of waiting for flights to be confirmed or denied and made the decision that I will be spending Christmas in my new home and cook my first Christmas dinner. My first concern was cooking a Christmas feast for 2 as good as the ones I remember, so I had a dry run on two unsuspecting guinea pigs (human) at the beginning of November. I smashed it. I also cooked for about 10 people, so my key lesson learned was to take what I thought we would need and divide it by at least three. I also found my anxiety being triggered by the dwindling or non-existent availability of delivery and pickup slots for groceries, closely followed by all roast dinner ingredients being sold out. So, I put my newly sharpened virtual elbows away and am making an adventure of Christmas shopping after December payday (please note - I am choosing not to think about this until it happens!)

I then chose to think and assess, what, this time next year would I care about looking back. My key successes would be that I had a happy Christmas, made great memories, and enjoyed myself. Everything else either doesn't matter or can wait.

So, what to some would be an epic failure - for me, I have taken back control and moved my priorities from commercial to experiencing the Hallmark Christmas magic.

I also have several Christmas light adventures planned, with the time that would have been used trailing around shops! I have found already that my stress is reduced, I have more time to prepare for Christmas, and am enjoying the lead-up to the holidays far more than I have in years whilst saving a tonne of money! Win-win!