This week, I’m talking about cutting back on Christmas. Yesterday, I talked about developing your holiday stop doing list, and today I’m talking about how you can bring more meaning to the holidays by being more intentional about the traditions, gift-giving, and how you spend your time at Christmas. If you cut out all the crap, you’ll free yourself up to do more of the things you want to be doing and what’s meaningful to you. 

With that in mind, here are a few of the traditions in the Micciche household that are meaningful and I would never give up:

• Advent calendar - every morning my kids open their advent calendar. There is a small drawer for each day - sometimes it’s a piece of candy, other times its an activity that we’re going to do that day. This is their favorite thing to do during the holidays and it creates surprises since the kids don’t know what’s on the agenda from day to day
• Advent wreath with nightly prayer - I’m Catholic and pretty orthodox, so praying every night with our advent wreath is a big deal and the top priority in our house. This year I’m super excited because I bought a new daily advent book that has prayers and conversation starters appropriate for my young kids, so we can teach our children about the coming of Jesus during this important time 
• Watching classic Christmas movies - Every year, I look forward to watching the classics with my kids 
• Driving around and looking at lights - as I mentioned earlier this week, we don’t put up outdoor lights, but we do love driving around about once a week to look at the lights near our house. My 2 oldest kids are 6 and 3, so this is a big deal around here. 
• Shopping for a toy for a needy child - giving is something that’s very important to teach my kids, especially during the holidays, so I involve my kids in buying, wrapping, and dropping off toys we buy for needy kids
• Baking - I love baking with my kids and trying new recipes and we usually do this at least once leading up to Christmas 
• Getting our tree - We live in Oregon where there are more Christmas tree farms than perhaps anywhere else in the world - cutting down our own tree and bringing it home is a special tradition from my childhood I’ve continued with my own family
• Christmas dinner with family - my parents and in-laws, our family, and my brother in law all get together on Christmas night for dinner. This allows us to all stay home on Christmas morning and have a relaxed day until we gather in the evening in one spot. 
• Make a birthday cake for Jesus - you may think I’m crazy, but we don’t put cookies and milk out for Santa. Instead, we make a birthday cake for Jesus on christmas eve and sing happy birthday to him. 

The only way we’ve been able to do some of these things is because we’ve cut out all the meaningless traditions, parties, and gift-giving. The focus on all of these activities is spending quality time with family and growing closer to the Lord, and raising my kids in the faith which are the priorities. Nearly all of our activities help fulfil this purpose and so even though we’re still busy this time of year, we’re busy doing the things that bring meaning and joy to the Christmas season.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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