PART 5 - There's a system for that.
(In case you missed part 4, it is here)

Is it possible to get through the holiday season in a calm and sedate manner? This has always been sold as a time to be with family and relaxing by a fire, but for many it is a harried exercise where we struggle to fit everything into a space that is clearly not big enough. Add the gift-getting dance on top of this, and plenty of folks never smell a moment of true calm. I know the feeling well because I was a for-sure victim of this social convention for much of my life. Over the years, interested in a better experience, I worked on trying to flip it from something I dreaded to something that might even hold a bit of joy for me. As with virtually every area of my life I sought to improve, it came down to wrapping a system around it.

Like all things, this system will only work if it is something you deem to matter. If you don't think it is important, then you can/should just stop reading and go do that thing you are more interested in. But if you want to (1) be known as someone who gives thoughtful gifts and (2) do so with a minimal amount of time/effort, then read on.

The first challenge is knowing what to get for those on your list. Here are some things I changed in my approach to try to get a better sense of what to give as presents. My super goal is to have an idea of what to get everyone by the end of summer. If new things present themselves later in the year, fine, but I like to be in a ready state come September. I achieve this by doing a lot of listening, observing (which is little more than visual listening), and when those don't get it done, question-asking. Those three things in concert tend to get me pretty far down the path to knowing what my people might like to receive.

As part of this, I keep a list of all the people I'm expecting to get a gift for. Whenever a new gift-possibility comes along, I add it to the list. Where there are holes in the list, I know I need to pay better attention around that person or start asking them some probing questions.

Another advantage of the dedicated list is that it lets me add unexpected people that catch my eye through the year. An example of this is the boys had a really nice bus driver a few years back. After noticing her going above and beyond multiple times, I added her to my list. When Xmas rolled around, I prepped a special envelope for her with a note of thanks and mention of the thing I noticed earlier in the year. It is something that just took me an extra few minutes but based on the thank you she sent home with Alex the next day, those five minutes were well invested.

Step two is getting gifts. Marty and I have developed a routine that works well for us. The day after Thanksgiving, we sit down with each of our lists (she keeps a list too). We then step through the people we need to buy for and, through our combined observations, make a master list of things to get. An added benefit of this one-time accounting is it lets us view everything at once so we can make sure there is good parity in what each of the kids is getting. Finalizing this master list usually takes us between an hour or two.

With this list in hand, we will then go out together and buy everything we can locally. We will often do this on the second Saturday after Thanksgiving. It takes between three to four hours of driving around. Our goal is to purchase everything in our zip code/city (e.g., we drop a list of any books off to our neighborhood bookshop and ask them to fill the full order). But for any items we can't find on our shopping day, when we get home, we order them online. That takes about another hour. This way, by day's end, everything has either been purchased or ordered, and now we just wait for stuff to roll in.

This planning and buying ritual has become another part of our holiday. Fact is, shopping day is one of my favorite days of the year. There are parts of the day that remind me of our life pre-children, even though we are mostly shopping for our children. Our spirits are light, and there tends to be a lot of laughing and hand-holding as we move about our town together. Truth is, you can put a day like that with my Marta atop my Christmas list any year and I'll be a wonderfully happy and content man.

fin