Christmas

I think the key thing is to make the most of the quiet times. Christmas Day itself can be quite intense, and there's a lot of 'everything has to be perfect'-ness tied up in it. I prefer Christmas Eve, as it's the stillpoint where you can just breathe in the atmosphere amid the sense of the world taking a pause. Somehow it's become a tradition in my family to open presents very late on Christmas Eve (the adults anyway) - approaching midnight - and being aligned to a wind-down towards bedtime softens that sense of the big performative reaction being necessary. Tired low-key expression of gratitude is more the vibe, and a satisfaction in knowing that that bit of admin is taken care of so the next morning can be more free-form, less formalised. 

Would an approach like that help at all? I suppose part of the issue is that all families have their own fixed traditions, rigidly adhered to for Christmas (in a way, the whole world's just a little more autistic in late December) - it's the luck of the draw as to which traditions have evolved to work with you, and which against...

I think the key thing is to make the most of the quiet times. Christmas Day itself can be quite intense, and there's a lot of 'everything has to be perfect'-ness tied up in it. I prefer Christmas Eve, as it's the stillpoint where you can just breathe in the atmosphere amid the sense of the world taking a pause. Somehow it's become a tradition in my family to open presents very late on Christmas Eve (the adults anyway) - approaching midnight - and being aligned to a wind-down towards bedtime softens that sense of the big performative reaction being necessary. Tired low-key expression of gratitude is more the vibe, and a satisfaction in knowing that that bit of admin is taken care of so the next morning can be more free-form, less formalised. 

Would an approach like that help at all? I suppose part of the issue is that all families have their own fixed traditions, rigidly adhered to for Christmas (in a way, the whole world's just a little more autistic in late December) - it's the luck of the draw as to which traditions have evolved to work with you, and which against...