The holiday season can be a joyful time of year but can also be fraught with financial stress and expectations. Between holiday events, presents, and festive extras like décor and holiday meals, the holiday season can quickly become filled with obligations that may leave you feeling less than jolly. To create a joyful holiday season that feels meaningful and aligns with your financial boundaries, I have a straightforward piece of advice. Be intentional. Decide what you want from the holidays, communicate those desires, and leave the rest. Let’s break these three items down.

Decide What You Want Out of The Holiday Season

Every person enjoys different traditions and festivities during the holidays. However, there can be pressure to participate in a wide range of activities to have a complete holiday experience with friends and family, which can add up. If you spend money on activities you genuinely do not enjoy, it does not always feel well spent. If you spend money on activities you cannot afford due to social pressure, it can feel even worse and negatively impact your financial well-being. Instead, consciously ask yourself what holiday activities bring you the most joy.

Do you enjoy checking out Christmas lights? Or drinking holiday drinks at home or out at a festive bar? Do you enjoy watching Christmas movies at home? Do you enjoy getting gifts for everyone in your social circle or just your closest friends? Do you not enjoy gifting and want to move to more experiential gifts? Do you love cooking and hosting, or would you rather meet out at a nice restaurant? You can also ask yourself which holiday activities you loathe, feel like are wastes of time or money, or don’t feel worth the money for you. From this list, you can start building a holiday season that aligns with what matters most to you and your family and get creative when connecting with others with different preferences.

Communicating Your Desires for The Holiday Season

Once you come up with your list of holiday activities that mean the most to you and start to budget for those activities, it is important to remember that these preferences may differ for other members of your family or social group. So, it is essential to communicate your preferences and ask your loved ones about theirs.

Talking about a person’s favorite holiday activities can be a fun conversation. Understanding where your preferences overlap is also supremely helpful in building a meaningful holiday experience for everyone involved. This may even result in uncovering surprising feelings in the family, such as everyone preferring to go on a vacation together over Christmas than exchanging gifts or that your mom hates cooking the holiday meals and it’s time for someone else to pick up the hosting reins or to opt to eat out on the holidays.

Although it can be fun to plan for the holiday season, suggesting changes to traditions or even opting out of holiday events can sometimes be an emotional experience. Perhaps a sibling does not understand why you don’t want to purchase Nutcracker tickets when the family attends every year, or your dad is disappointed that you will not be visiting for as long as in previous years. Prioritizing your financial boundaries and joy during the holiday season may mean disappointing others, but it is possible to set boundaries while still being considerate of others. This is where friends and families can get creative while still connecting. To make these conversations more manageable, you could try to explain why you are declining certain holiday activities, find compromises, or suggest alternative options. For example, suggest grabbing a holiday coffee and walking through the park if you turn down an invitation to go to a holiday bar. Thinking back to our Nutcracker ballet example, perhaps you could attend the ballet and purchase less expensive tickets if it is not your thing, but your sibling wants the whole family to attend together. The most important thing here is to communicate honestly, be considerate, and keep the end goal of a joyful holiday with your loved ones at the center of the chosen activities. 

Embrace Your Choices for A Meaningful Holiday Season

Now that you have done the work to plan your holiday intentionally. Allocate your money for the activities you have cultivated for yourself. One benefit to spending only on the holiday activities that bring you joy or that you genuinely want to experience is that it brings alignment between your spending and what you and your family truly value, which may even allow you to splurge on the handful of things that make the holiday season the most special to you. By the end of the holiday season, fewer meaningful holiday traditions can lead to a more joyful experience overall and an avoidance of post-holiday blues when checking your bank account.