Simplify Your Christmas: 100 Ways to Reduce the Stress and Recapture the Joy of the Holidays

by Elaine St. James

This book is chock-full of great tips for reducing the stress we all feel at holiday time. How much should we spend on our tree? Did I get the kids enough presents? What do I get for Aunt Sue THIS... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0836267850
• ISBN13: 9780836267853
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Simplify Your Christmas, hardcover

I'm going to read this book before the holiday season ends--or at least before Valentine's Day! I've skimmed through it and find its message reasonable and compelling. Enough already! Let's simplify these holidays that do not have to be paragons of perfection, sugar plums of plenty. The holidays are about one's religious or seasonal observances, they're about family and friends--what they're NOT about is the commercial hijacking of Christmas so that it becomes a frantic feeding frenzy of buying and overconsuming.

Some good ideas

I rather liked this book. There is not truly 100 ways to "simplify" your Christmas, but almost everyone can find at least four or six to simplify theirs, depending on what they find over indulgent or too time consuming. Quite a few suggestions are common sense when you read them, but due to holiday over stress and over planning you tend to forget about them and a quick review is very helpful. My personal favorites are "rise above the guilt" and "halt the runaway train" which are chapters on emotions at Christmas and over zealous gifting. I think the beauty of this book is almost everyone will find a few ideas to employ to destress their holidays. And that's what most of us need, not 100, but just a few solid ones that will work. You'll find them in this book, and be all the more merry for it.

Plans to implement suggestions in this book.

I am reading all of Elaine St. James' books. This is the first I have completed. Will now send it to each of my daughters, asking them to notate which ideas interest them. Then we might even have the "guys" scan it for their suggestions. Determined to have a more peaceful Christmas next year.

A great stress-buster!

This book is chock-full of great tips for reducing the stress we all feel at holiday time. How much should we spend on our tree? Did I get the kids enough presents? What do I get for Aunt Sue THIS year? How can I get out of the office party without riling the boss? One of my favorite section begins on Page 29 with "Take a Poll". Here, you're encouraged to ask your family members how they really feel about your holiday traditions. What traditions do they like enough to keep doing? Which are painful, boring or ridiculous enough to dump? Another home run is found on page 87: Rethink your Christmas Card Tradition. St. James gives good advice on how to give your holiday mailing list (why not apply this advice to your Christmas gift list, too?) a liposuction treatment. And, all without guilt! This book is intelligent and certainly seems to have a wide audience. Frankly, anyone with financial concerns (do you still want to be paying Christmas credit card bills next July?), time restraints (wouldn't you rather spend the time taking your kids to the movies?) or emotional issues (if the hoidays are supposed to be peaceful, gracious and dignified, then why am I so depressed?) should find St. James' advice helpful. Try just 10 of her tips and your life this December will improve.I liked this book so much that I'm going to give IT for Christmas!

Read this & learn to REALLY enjoy the holidays!

This has some excellent ideas for truly enjoying the holiday season, along with cutting down the costs, & some of the hecticness I think we all experience. This book can help us get rid of some of the expectations we impose on ourselves & that we allow others to impose on us. Some of the ideas, of course are not for everyone & a bit extreme. But it can give you a beginning to ending the madness & a start to assessing what is truly important! READ NOW!