Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 23, 1995 TAG: 9511220031
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Sorry, it had to be said.
It had to be said so that I, like most women, can get on with the frantic, face-breaking-out pace of the next four weeks - the shopping, the weekly treks to the post office, the decorating, the cooking, the cards, the cleaning, the failed crafts projects. ...
We all know the list.
But can we pare it down? How do we peel back the materialistic clutter - so we can get down to the real business of connecting with our families and our friends? How do we get that screaming Material Girl inside us to shut up?
Sarah Ban Breathnach is a professional observer of the psychology of Christmas. The author of the new book, ``Simple Abundance'' (Warner Books, $17.95), she sees too many women walking around this time of year ``as if we have Marley's chains on us.''
``Women do Christmas,`` she said in a telephone interview from her home in Tacoma Park, Md. ``We've been doing Christmas for 2,000 years. That's why it gets done.''
If you find yourself truly chained by the expectations of doing Christmas in its tiring entirety, listen up: It doesn't have to be that way.
Ban Breathnach's book is organized in almanac form, with 366 daily essays on cheap, contemplative and very simple suggestions for slowing down. But her ideas seem especially revolutionary this harried time of year. For starters:
Make the holiday yours; do only what you love. If that means not wearing yourself out shopping for 27 relatives, initiate a gift exchange. One family I know draws names from a hat, but instead of buying gifts they contribute to the person's favorite charity (buying only for the children).
``The gifts we buy in the mall for our children or our spouses represent the gifts we really want to give them,'' Ban Breathnach argues. ``What a difference it would make if we gave the gift of undivided attention instead, or enthusiasm, or good cheer. Give instead the gift of wonder and peaceful surroundings.
``But you can only do that when you step back and only do the things for Christmas that you really love to do.''
Initiate holiday traditions; build memories. If decorating is your big thing, do it the same day every year and enlist your family's help. Instead of rushing out tomorrow to shop with the rest of the world, make a pot of turkey-vegetable soup, write out a shopping list for the Christmas pudding ingredients, create an Advent wreath and put on your Ella Fitzgerald Christmas CD.
``Families that are troubled do not have traditions,'' the writer says. ``Traditions are our emotional security blanket.''
Stop taking care of everybody else for a minute and mother yourself. Maybe it's taking a nap in the middle of a harried Saturday afternoon - isn't sleep what women crave most anyway?
Maybe it's hopping the garage-sale circuit on a rainy day with your best friend and her new beau - and fighting over the coveted 10-cent apron. Maybe it's reading O. Henry's ``Gift of the Magi'' before you venture into Toys R Us. Maybe it's watching Jean Shepherd's classic movie, ``A Christmas Story,'' for the 17th time.
``Self-nurturing is very hard for women,`` Ban Breathnach says. ``But eventually if we don't refill our reservoir we'll have nothing left to give.''
And, as you're sitting down to the Thanksgiving table today, remember to be grateful. ``My friend's family starts their Thanksgiving meal with three pieces of dried corn on an appetizer plate - so they'll pause and think about the first Thanksgiving and about what they have,'' Ban Breathnach says.
Make a literal inventory of your life's assets: your health, your husband, your job, your child. ... Give thanks for the little things - from the mum in the jelly jar on your kitchen windowsill to the smell of coffee in your favorite cup.
As you consider plunging into your third helping of stuffing - comfort-food proof that there is a God - think about the dried corn and the first turkey you ever drew around your hand and this French proverb:
``Gratitude is the heart's memory.''
by CNB