You’ve been told there is a right way and a wrong way to holiday. There are family traditions. There are assumptions. Tying these together is guilt.
But you can choose how you want to holiday. Which way is your way to have a guilt free holiday?
Guilt Free Holiday Baking
Option 1: Start planning your holiday baking in July. Check your supplies to see if you need any new baking sheets or specialty pans. Do you still have the cake mold shaped like the Grinch? Oh, good grief, aren’t you glad you checked in time to have one custom made? You will make at minimum 12 dozen cookies and at least a dozen fruitcakes. You will package everything together beautifully and distribute the goodies to everyone you know.
Option 2: The thought of holiday cookies will cross your mind about a week before Thanksgiving. You will plan to do something similar to Option 1, but at the last minute, you will instead make a batch of sugar cookies you saw on Pinterest. Your cookies will look nothing like the ones on Pinterest, so you’ll eat them all yourself. Then you’ll bake whatever two or three kinds of cookies your family likes the best. You’ll take a few to work but you and your family will eat most of them in a few days.
Option 3: You purchase refrigerated dough and try to pass off the results as your own creation. Nobody is fooled, but you don’t care. It’s called baking, OK? It’s not called mixing. You have baked. Happy holidays are assured.
Option 4: You hit a high-end bakery and purchase all their most beautiful and impressive cookies. You display them beautifully. They become a part of your holiday decor. They are far too impressive to actually eat.
Option 5: You pick up a box of sandwich cremes at the grocery store and toss it on the table. Cookies have been provided. You’re done here.
Option 6: Announce you’re eating keto now, and imply that anyone who is still eating sugar obviously does not love herself.
Guilt Free Holiday Shopping
Option 1: Your shopping is all done. You had it all finished it before you turned your furnace on for the first time. It’s also all wrapped. As soon as you go out to the woods and cut down a tree, put it in your living room and cover it with hundreds of hand-crafted ornaments, you will arrange all the gifts in a way that could be photographed for the cover of a decorating magazine.
Option 2: You have purchased a few things. You still have more to do. You’re making a few items this year, too. Still, you know you’ll be pushing it to get it all done on time. It would be nice if you could remember where in hell you put the 25 rolls of wrapping paper you bought last Dec. 26 at a discount. Oh, well, maybe next year, you think as you go buy more. When you get home, you decide a good place to put the wrapping paper is under the bed in the guest room. And that is how you finally locate the 25 rolls from last year. Congratulations. You now have enough wrapping paper to gift wrap a house.
Option 3: Everybody on your list is getting a gift card. Eh, you’ll put it inside a nice card. Oh, and maybe you’ll stick a few of those cookies you baked from the tube of dough in a little plastic baggie. That’ll look nice.
Option 4: Every adult on your list is getting a bottle of premium liquor. You know they’ll like their gift, and you will be able to do all your shopping at one store in about 15 minutes. Don’t forget to buy a few bottles for … for entertaining. Yes. To serve to others. I’m definitely not recommending you buy Irish cream for you to drink alone in your hot cocoa every night from now until mid-February.
Option 5: You stick a few bucks in a card and call it good. Whatever.
Option 6: Announce you are offended that Christmas has become all about consumerism and an obligation to buy cheap crap that will only end up in a landfill. Tell everyone on your would-be list that you have donated some goats to a needy family in a developing country in lieu of gifts. Say it in such a way that everybody who bought actual gifts feels like they are ruining the planet.
Guilt Free Holiday Meals
Option 1: You will have both turkey and ham. You will make dinner rolls, noodles and stuffing from scratch. In fact, it is all made from scratch, including the crackers on the cheese tray. Good heavens, you aren’t going to serve crackers from a box! They wouldn’t go with the artisanal cheese you bought from that couple who lives down by the river with their 17 rescue cows. The very idea! You will have so many side dishes you need to set up additional tables, all of which are graced with fresh flowers and candles and holiday stuff that nobody can really identify. Some kind of greenery, for sure.
Option 2: You’ll have turkey. You’ve done the math and you’re almost certain that it will be thawed and ready to go on Thanksgiving morning, unless it isn’t, like last year, when you served everything but turkey at 1 p.m. and then brought out the turkey for a sort of meaty dessert at about 3. Oh, well. You’ll make your grandma’s special dish from scratch, but you bought the noodles and rolls and you aren’t sorry. A little guilty, maybe, but not sorry.
Option 3: Listen, ham is a lot easier. You just heat it up. If you get the spiral-cut, you don’t even have to carve it. Turkey is just too complicated. You did make mashed potatoes. And gravy. And you bought some deli sides. I don’t know what you people want from me.
Option 4: You purchase the entire dinner from your supermarket. It comes in big boxes. It’s got all the stuff you would want, just not as good as you remember it being when your grandma used to be in charge of all this stuff. Well listen up: Did Grandma have to work 50 hours a week in an understaffed HR department? With Karen, who throws you under the bus every chance she gets? Betting Grandma would have bought prepared stuff too if she had.
Option 5: You find a restaurant that is open. General Tso’s chicken and egg rolls for all!
Sophia Sinclair is Curvicality’s sex and relationships writer and the author of the Small-Town Secrets romance series, available on Amazon. Reach Sophia at sophia@curvicality.com.
Our model is Sheila Lopez (@ladivina.latina)
What’s your style of doing the holidays? Share below.
