Photo Courtesy of Clipart Heaven
Article Courtesy of Organized Christmas
What's the secret to cutting holiday stress? Stay healthy!
On December 26th, ask any wife and mother how she's feeling. If she's
honest, she'll probably say, "Tired!" Along with the excitement and
bustle of the holidays comes another factor: stress and fatigue.
Parties, events, and too many late nights cooking, making and wrapping
can take a toll on even the healthiest. Add seasonal stressors like rich foods,
alcohol, family gatherings and winter travel, and you've got a recipe for
post-Christmas depression.
Solution? Before the height of the season, reinforce good health habits
and schedule self-care for healthy holidays ... and beyond.
To Do Today
Schedule self-care and reinforce daily health habits to cut holiday
stress.
Even the most dedicated fitness buff may find healthy routines take a
tumble during the holidays. Today, take action to protect your healthy habits
from the seasonal onslaught.
Pencil gym sessions or exercise classes into the holiday calendar, and
make time for daily de-stressing activities like dog-walking, meditation or
needlework. Look for healthy alternatives to holiday treats, and be mindful of
diet changes as the season settles in.
Sound complex? Then try this simple 5-10-15 minimum daily reminder to
maintain good health during the holiday season:
Take 5 ... servings of fruits and vegetables. Add 10 ... minutes of
quiet time to reduce stress. Combine with 15 ... minutes of gentle aerobic
exercise.
It's a quick and easy recipe for holiday health!
Christmas Creep: The Selling
of the Holiday Season
Will the marketplace make your holiday spending decisions for you?
Reach for the joy, clear your vision and refuse to be manipulated:
Are you suffering from "Christmas creep"? If you've been
shopping lately, you know the symptoms!
Do you cower under trailing tinsel at the supermarket check-stand,
trapped between two glossy ranks of Christmas magazines--in September?
Do your teeth clench when you must push aside boxes of holiday gift
wrap and Christmas ornaments to find school supplies and Halloween treats at
your local drugstore?
Does your mailbox groan under a daily dose of mail order catalogs, each
admonishing you to "order early for Christmas delivery"?
Something is rotten in Denmark--and Alaska, Hawaii and the Lower 48.
It's time to take a good, hard, jaundiced look at a major source of holiday
stress: the distortion of the holiday season at the hands of the retail
industry.
Fashionable as it is to decry the "commercialization" of
Christmas, our society doesn't really mean it. The holiday season is big, big
business.
From August to January, investment magazines and the Wall Street
Journal anxiously finger the pulse of the Christmas shopper. Holiday sales
predictions flood the headlines of the newspaper's financial section. Store
managers appear on the local news, while accountant-types in gray suits sit in
TV studios and pontificate about Christmas "trends"--will this be the
year that hapless shoppers can be coerced into paying full retail price right
up to December 24?
Christmas is big business, all right, but it wasn't always this way.
Before the first World War, commercial aspects of gift-giving were
nearly nonexistent. While children received a few toys, some candy or fruit,
adults exchanged only token gifts, usually homemade in the week or two before
Christmas. The blow-the-budget, new-car-with -the-red-bow mentality had yet to
appear.
In the economic doldrums following the war, however, retailers seized
the opportunity to stimulate business by promoting gift-buying for Christmas.
Women's magazines, highly influential in pre-radio and TV times, ran
bold-faced, guilt-inducing ads urging readers to "show their love"
for their husbands and families by giving expensive, purchased Christmas gifts.
And we bought it--and bought it and bought it and bought it!
Ninety-some years later, this strategy is ingrained in our economy, so
much so that many retail stores' entire annual profits are earned during the
six-week "Christmas shopping season". It's business, pure and simple.
But is "business as usual" quite so pure and simple when
applied to America's families? What effect does the pig-down-the-python holiday
retail binge have on us and our children?
September's tinsel garlands, craft and cookie magazines are evidence of
one malign effect: distortion of the rhythm, timing and length of the
"holiday season". (Don't believe me? Just try to find those magazines
when you really need them--in November!)
For Christians, the liturgical Christmas season is the 12 days between
Christmas Eve and Epiphany, a time of celebration, feasting and joy. By
contrast, Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is a traditional time of
reflection, discipline, and preparation. In the Christian tradition, one
"keeps a good Advent"--austere, disciplined, and contemplative--in
order to more fully celebrate the 12-day season of joy to follow.
Retailers have it all backward--and way, way too long!
Starting in September (August, for television vendors of
"Christmas music" collections), merchants create an ever-expanding
blizzard of advertising and promotion: a snowball that explodes the morning of
December 25, leaving only the dirty slush of let-down and anti-climax behind.
The traditional two-week "Christmas season" has been replaced
by an agonizingly-long "Christmas shopping season"--with NOTHING to
follow but a few "Everything You Wanted, But Didn't Get For Christmas, Is
On Sale Now!" events. By stretching the "holiday season" to four
months (five, if you count the "after Christmas" peddling of leftover
gift wrap and shop-worn ornaments), retailers' sales may increase--but real,
live people face burst bubbles of expectation on the morning of December 25th.
"Is this all there is?" we think, surveying the piles of shredded
gift wrap.
Any parent knows the effect of this holiday distortion on children: my
youngest son was so overwhelmed by the excitements and experiences of his
two-year-old Christmas morning that all he could do was cling to me and cry.
The second effect of the retailing avalanche: the
"whadjagit?" syndrome. Children (of all ages--adults are not immune!)
simmer for months in a broth of greed, fired by misleading, repetitive toy
commercials that cling to TV cartoons like bubble gum to the bottom of a chair.
Gifts, the getting (and buying) of them, become the heart and soul of the
holidays--and that's the way the merchants want it!
If we blindly follow the retailers' equation (Christmas=Presents =$$$),
we're faced with a conundrum: by nature, the "whadjagit?" syndrome is
impossible to satisfy. Gift getters never experience quite the joy they've
anticipated, while gift givers can never purchase the peak experience they hope
to provide.
Translation: four-year-old Bobby learns his "Monster V-Bot"
doesn't really fly through the air, unaided, just like on TV; when he tosses it
aside in disgust (usually to play with the box), Mom buries her head in her
hands and tries to remember exactly why she spent hours shopping and searching
and scrimping to purchase this dear desire of her offspring's heart!
Who gets what they want through the "whadjagit?" syndrome?
Not the getters. Not the givers. The only winners are the ones left with the
$$$ in the till--the retailers. It's a marketing triumph, all right--but it's
also a recipe for personal and familial disappointment.
Get armed! Start the season by focusing on your family's holiday
values. Make a holiday budget, and stick to it. Track spending with a set of
gift lists. Investigate new ways to bring joy and celebration to the holiday,
without spending money.
You have nothing to lose but February's unpaid bills!
Today's Recipe
This hearty, delicious Confetti Bean Soup recipe makes a pretty layered
gift in a jar. Dried beans stay fresh for months, so you can make this holiday
gift-in-a-jar weeks in advance of the holiday season.
Our recipe makes 12 jar gifts, and we make it easy with free printable
gift tags:
Savory Italian herbs spark this hearty, easy bean soup. Paired with
Texas Cornbread Mix, this duo is just the thing for cold winter weekends!
Better, it's a good keeper, so make this gift-in-a-jar ahead for
holiday giving. Unlike cookie jar gifts, Confetti Bean Soup won't go stale in
storage.
Makes 12 gift jars at a cost approximately $2 per jar.
Includes free printable gift tags.
Ingredients:
12 wide-mouth pint (2-cup) canning jars with lid and rings
14 poundsassorted dried peas, beans and lentils(at least 8 different
varieties):
pink beans
black beans
baby lima beans
lentils
red lentils
black-eyed peas
red kidney beans
pinto beans
split peas
great northern beans
small red beans
white beans
12 italian-flavor bouillon cubes (note: substitute beef-flavor if you
cannot find italian-flavor cubes!)
12 bay leaves
Instructions
1. Wash, rinse and dry canning jars.
2. Layer beans in jars. Add 1/4-cup of each type of bean to the jars,
layering the beans. Choose the most colorful bean for the bottom layers of the
jar. Add eight 1/4-cup layers to each jar.
3. Place 1 bay leaf and one bouillon cube on top of the beans in each
jar.
4. Seal each jar using lids and rings.
[Hint for FoodSaver brand vacuum sealer owners: use the jar sealing
attachment to seal bean soup jars for longer storage.]
5. Cut appropriate amount of 7-inch circles from cotton fabric. Top
each jar with fabric circle, and tie with ribbon.
6. Print appropriate number of gift tags. Cut gift tags apart and
attach to jars with ribbon. Or, hand-write recipe tags using the recipe below.
Confetti Bean Soup Recipe
Set aside bouillon cube and bay leaf and choose method to soak
beans.
Quick soak: Rinse and sort beans in a large pot. Add 6-8 cups of hot
water. Bring to a rapid boil, and boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Cover
and let stand for 1 hour. Drain soak water and rinse beans.
Overnight soak: Rinse and sort beans in a large pot. Add 6-8 cups cold
water. Let stand overnight, or at least 6 to 8 hours. Drain soak water and
rinse beans.
To cook: Place beans in a large pot. Add:
6 cups water
1 can (14 oz.) chopped tomatoes in juice
bay leaf
bouillon cube
Simmer gently until beans are tender, about 2 hours. Season to taste
with salt and pepper.
