The Most Wonderful Time...Or, How To Navigate The "Holiday Corridor."

Well, it's here. The "most wonderful time of the year," according to Andy Williams.

I call it the "holiday corridor," that rush of days that starts sometime after the last Halloween pumpkins have been tossed, and kicks into full gear along about the week before Thanksgiving.  And, while it does have many wonderful connotations, from the perspective of the therapist's chair, it's also a time when my clients--and friends and family, for that matter--report rising levels of stress.

In the next few posts, I'll be talking about recurring issues that many of us are faced with during the holiday season: expectations we have, realistic and unrealistic; holiday stress, from without and within; what happens when the family gets together; ghosts of Christmases past: our roles with parents; and, the inevitable "shrinking day:" when 24 hours seems to go by in a blink.

There's also what I call "general holiday fatigue." I can remember when the holiday (specifically, Christmas) season was officially launched on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I have blurry memories of bundling up and riding in my mother's Ford to the Sears parking lot, waiting for Santa to arrive via helicopter.  It was late November, cold (often snowy on the east coast), and Christmas arrived in a scant 30 days or less.

Now, our exposure to everything "holiday" (the politically correct moniker now) can start as early as mid-October. Yes, on any given evening of TV watching, Halloween ad "boos"  are now interspersed with  holiday ad "ho! ho! ho!s" At worst, it confuses children. At best, it's an annoying reminder to adults.

But back to Christmas fatigue.  In my former advertising career, a statistic we bandied about with clients was the fact that, on average, human beings were bombarded with about 300 "messages" a day from different sources. At that time, those sources did not include Internet/mobile pop up ads or emails. It's likely that the number of messages is somewhat higher today--and rising.  By my unscientific estimate, by the time we have weathered the holiday corridor, if we are exposed to even, say a conservative 100 messages a day, we will have endured a mind-numbing 6,000 messages--most with a holiday theme.

Add to this the holiday shopping, cards, meals, travel--is it any wonder we experience holiday fatigue?

Don't get me wrong. I love the holidays--in my case, Christmas. I also am a big believer in self-care, which is why, over the next few posts, I'll be talking about the challenges of the season, and ways we can minimize humbug and maximize joy.

Until then, thanks for listening.