Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Family Time

Field Guide to a Simple, Joyful Holiday Season

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The holiday season is here! Honestly, I’m excited. Having a four-year-old helps make this time of the year fun and wonder-filled.

We used to buy and ship a lot of stuff around the country, and it was incredibly expensive and stressful. So for the past few years, we’ve been on a mission to make our celebrations joyful, memorable . . . and slow. We’ve established a few traditions, like tree decorating, cookie making, and a solstice celebration. But we try not to get too frenzied with making, baking, or gift giving. We leave lots of time for taking walks, reading aloud, telling stories, and just being together.

I’m excited about the handmade gifts we have planned for our close friends and family members, but I can’t say very much about that here, at least until after the big day. So I thought I’d offer you a roundup of some helpful resources for making this holiday season simpler, greener, and more meaningful:

Ideas for do-it-yourself recycled gift bags, green gift bows, meaningful gifts, and plenty of food for thought on focusing more on people than things this holiday season.

A fantastic list of resources for making the holidays simple and stress-free. Also worth checking out: 35 Gifts Your Children Will Never Forget.

A beautiful natural advent calendar and simple gift-giving strategy.

Twenty-eight ideas for clutter-free gifts, including gift certificates, cooking or yoga lessons, and homemade edibles.

And finally, here’s a roundup of my past posts about simple, natural, and slow ways to celebrate this time of the year:

As a gift to myself and my family, I’m embracing slow blogging this holiday season, so you may notice fewer posts than usual.

Are you planning a slow, simple holiday celebration this year? I’d love to hear about it. 

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6 Fun Ways To Spend a Cold, Dark Night

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I love cold weather, but the shorter days are always difficult for me to adjust to. Over the years I’ve stored up a toolbox of activities to make cold, winter nights more fun. I find myself especially in need of them in the days and weeks after the time changes.

1. Eat by candlelight

We didn’t light a lot of candles in my house when I was growing up, but occasionally we’d eat by candlelight. Those nights, along with random power outages, are some of my happiest memories. Flickering soft light just makes any dinner more special. My family also eats by candlelight now and then. And every time we do it, it’s as fun and uplifting as I remember it being when I was a kid. Maybe it’s because it’s hard to rush when you’re watching the reflection of flames dance on glasses.

2. Start a fire

There’s so much to love about a winter fire – the warmth, the mesmerizing flames, the way it brings the entire family together in one spot to look at something other than a TV screen. Bonus: you may not have to turn on your heater to enjoy toasty nights.

3. Read aloud or tell stories

Years ago, an older friend told me that she and her husband had been reading books aloud to each other each night for decades.  I loved the idea, and since then, my husband and I have read many books aloud together. These days we spend our read-aloud time reading to our kids. But I know soon, we’ll move on to adult books again. There are so many great reasons to start a family reading tradition. I wrote about them in this post.

Storytelling is also a fun way to pass an evening. In Robert Shank’s book Tell Me A Story: Narrative and Intelligence, he explains that “human memory is story-based.” We’ve learned by telling each other stories since long before Homer. If coming up with a fictional yarn sounds more pressure-packed than taking the GRE, don’t worry. Just relax and tell stories about your childhood, grandparents, or past adventures. If you’re a parent, this kind of storytelling serves a bigger purpose: it helps kids recognize their place in a larger family and feel closer to their parents. Most people love listening to stories. And the more you practice, the better you get at telling them.

6 fun ways to spend a cold dark night #winter

4. Throw a potluck

With the extra dose of darkness, we can all probably use double-shots of health and happiness. Well, the research is in: social connectedness is good for us. Researchers from Brigham Young University recently reviewed 148 studies and found that people with strong ties to family, friends or co-workers have a 50 percent lower risk of dying over a given period than those with fewer social connections. As The New York Times reported, “Having few friends or weak social ties to the community is just as harmful to health as being an alcoholic or smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes a day.” Potlucks are a thrifty and labor-saving way to invite your friends, neighbors, or colleagues over. My acquaintances may just be exceptional cooks, but potlucks never seem to disappoint.

5. Stargaze

I wrote about winter stargazing in this post. Shortly thereafter I made bold plans to stargaze every night with my trusty copy of 365 Starry Nights. The first few nights of January, I had a great time scouting out Orion and Pleides. Then it got cloudy. And it stayed cloudy until … July. Yes, rainy Eugene is not a stargazer’s paradise. Oh how I miss the Colorado night skies. But if you live somewhere with few clouds and a dark sky, bundling up and gazing at the stars is an age-old, relaxing way to spend a cold, dark winter night.

6. Make Something with your hands

In her book Lifting Depression, neuroscientist Kelly Lambert argues that using our hands for manual labor helps us prevent and cure depression. She says that when we cook, garden, knit, sew, build, or repair things with our hands and see tangible results from our efforts, our brains are bathed in feel-good chemicals. I just got my knitting needles out after neglecting them for the summer, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see what I can make with my own two hands in a relatively short time (while I’m sitting in front of the fire, listening to a story, watching a movie, or otherwise enjoying a winter evening).

The Color of Springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination. Terri Guillemets #winter #seasons #coldweather

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these related posts:

What’s your favorite way to spend a cold, dark night? Do you have any tips for coping with fewer daylight hours?

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Days of Rest

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Last week my son and I spent a couple of nice, leisurely days at the Oregon Coast with my mom and sister, who were visiting from out of town. I’m always amazing by how recharging even a short time away from work, emails, phone calls, and social networking can be.

In the last few months, I’ve started powering down every Sunday – leaving the computer, email, and phone off and hanging out with my family. Sometimes we go on a hike, go swimming, or walk to the park. Sometimes we hang out at home and linger over breakfast, read the newspaper, and work in the backyard. I usually take a nap with my son in the afternoon or read a novel.

At first taking a day off just felt strange. Between taking care of my son and the house and working on this blog and my writing business, I’m used to toiling nearly every waking moment. Sundays just felt entirely non-productive, even wasteful. But as the weeks pass, I find myself looking forward to my family’s slow, quiet, non-electronic Sundays.

Moreover, I’m realizing that a day of rest is actually productive. It gives me time to think and reflect, which are necessary elements to the writing life. And I don’t find myself wasting time, procrastinating, or avoiding work as much on the other days of the week, because I know I’ll get a chance to rest and recharge on Sunday.

Many have long understood the importance of a weekly day of rest. Followers of Judaism observe Shabbat from sundown on Friday until Saturday night. They are freed from the regular daily labor, can spend time with family, and can contemplate the spiritual aspects of life. Traditionally Jewish people also observed a Shemitah Year every seventh year, when they left the fields fallow to give the land and society time to rest. All debts were also canceled during that year, so they could begin anew again.

Many Christians observe a day of rest on Sunday. Some Muslims take a day or half day of rest on Friday. And there’s a new movement growing called Secular Sabbath. Marc Bittman wrote about it in the New York Times a couple of years ago, when he came to terms with his addiction to being plugged in. He discovered what I and probably many others have in our always-on society – forcing yourself to unplug can be surprisingly difficult:

I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.

Like me, Bittman eventually adjusted and came to look forward to his days off:

Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

Do you take a day of rest each week? How do you spend it?