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| |    Coping with Stress during the Holidays by Susan E. Davis reviewed by Laura Jana, M.D., F.A.A.P. As much as the thought of the upcoming winter holidays may give us a glow in early October, by the middle of November that glow often has ignited into a bonfire of anxiety, if not outright panic. Oh no, it's only a few weeks until Christmas or Hanukkah, we say, and how are we going to get everything done? We're spending too much, eating too much, and trying to work in too many social engagements. The holidays have become too commercial, we complain; we're losing the deeper meanings and raising a generation of kids who care only for toys and money. Still more sources of stress Families with single parents, multicultural roots, or far-flung members can suffer even more during this supposedly joyous time. A single-parent family may suddenly feel excruciatingly small; blended families may have a hard time reconciling conflicting holiday customs; dispersed families can mean guilt and loneliness, as well as the stress of having to shop and ship in a timely manner. And even the most ardent advocates of healthy living can find their habits derailed by the plentitude of booze and sweets, as well as the lack of time to exercise. Easing the load and recapturing the joy With a little planning, however, there are ways of getting through the holidays without going either bananas or broke. At first, ironically enough, setting up your holiday to reduce stress can in itself be stressful; you might find that it will involve going against mainstream trends, such as when you decide to give only one gift to each child or to skip sending Christmas cards. But once you cross that initial hurdle of doing things differently and get everyone in your family on board, your holidays can take on a new level of meaning and whole new levels of fun. The articles that follow include many tips on how to ease the stress no matter how much ho, ho, ho may have leached out of your seasonal celebrations.
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