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Lately I’ve been getting a fair number of search engine hits from people looking for ways to skip out on Christmas altogether. I’ve also been getting visitors who want to celebrate this holiday without exchanging presents for it anymore.

In the past, I’ve blogged about alternative ways to celebrate Christmas if you’re only interested in bowing out of the gift exchanges.

What should you do if you want to stop celebrating it altogether, though? It can be harder to turn down an invitation for a meal, get-together, or festive performance than it is to say you’re simply bowing out of the present exchange. Sometimes people who love this holiday have a hard time understanding why anyone wouldn’t want to celebrate it.

With that being said, there are some reasons not to celebrate this holiday that are hard to argue with.

Travel

There have been times when my spouse and I travelled over the holidays. Some airlines have started to crack down on people bringing overstuffed or over-sized carry-on bags with them.

We’ve travelled with other airlines that have strict weight requirements for everything you bring with you. Going over those limits can be expensive, so you have to be careful about what you do and don’t pack.

The other nice thing about travelling is it nearly impossible to pressure someone into participating in a specific event when they’re hundreds or thousands of miles away at the time. At the very most, you might have time for a breezy conversation with them before returning to whatever agenda you’ve set for your day.

Grief

While grief isn’t one of the reasons why I don’t celebrate Christmas, I have known people who changed how they celebrated the holidays after the death of a loved one. In some cases, this can mean toning down those celebrations or even not having them at all.

No kind or reasonable person would guilt-trip someone into celebrating something that reminded them of such bittersweet memories.

Minimalism

This may be confirmation bias on my part, but I keep meeting more and more people who are interested in paring down their possessions and simplifying their lives.

Minimalism can be a great reason to cut back on all kinds of holiday stuff. Why not leave the Christmas decorating and event-planning to people who genuinely enjoy them?

It doesn’t make any sense to buy things you don’t like with money you should be spending elsewhere simply to impress people.

Nearly everyone understand what it’s like to feel tension between their values and what others think they should be doing. Framing the conversation this way can earn you supporters that you might not have otherwise had.

Religion

Christmas is a deeply religious holiday for many of my relatives. I’m planning to blog about some of those experiences later on this year, but it can be hard for my mind to tease out the difference between the kinds of Christmases I had growing up and the secular version of this holiday that some people knew.

They are tightly bound together in my mind.

It would be quite strange to insist on celebrating Eid with someone who wasn’t Muslim or Yule with someone who wasn’t Pagan, after all.

I see the religious celebration of Christmas as the same thing. It’s great for people who are part of that religion, and it’s fine if outsiders want to respectfully experience it as well. It is incredibly bizarre to pressure non-believers into celebrating a faith they don’t have, though.

No

Sometimes you don’t have to give a reason at all. While I generally do try to explain my decisions to people who ask, there are times when this doesn’t work so well.

“No” can be used as a full sentence if you’re having a conversation with someone who is going to pick apart any answer you give to them.

Respond

If you don’t celebrate Christmas any longer, how did you come to this decision? If you’ve never celebrated Christmas, what other holidays have you celebrated and how do you feel about them? If you’ve changed how you celebrate certain holidays, what kinds of changes have you made?

Close your eyes when you listen to this video.

It will be well worth it.

1. Internet access.
2. Books.
3. The ability to read this list and others like it.
4. Centralized heat. I’m so glad I don’t have to build a fire every morning to cook breakfast on and to stay warm with.
5. My Canadian and American identities.
6. The right to vote.
7. Funny texts from my family. They always have the greatest stories about what’s going on in their lives!
8. Antibiotics. Many of us might not still be around without them.
9. My funny, kind, and mischievous husband.
10. Lemon meringue pie.
11. Youtube. Who else has found the strangest and most wonderful things there?
12. People who enjoy my writing.
13. The workers who sweep the streets in Toronto. They keep our city looking good.
14. Life in a country where the media doesn’t spend months to years obsessing over every single detail of one upcoming election.*
15. Thanksgiving feasts.
16. Thanksgiving naps.
17. That tired, satisfied feeling you get when all of the food is safely packed away and the dishes and counters are scrubbed clean on a holiday like today.
18. Every Star Trek show in existence.**
19. Toilet paper. I’ve read that some people used to use corn cobs for this purpose, and it makes me shudder.
20. You.

*Canadian elections don’t happen on a strict timetable, and there’s a much shorter time space between when campaigns begin and when the election itself takes place.

** My spouse and I have been slowly working our way through all of them. We’re on season one of The Original Series right now, and it’s make me feel like I’ve travelled back through time. The 60’s were a time of drastic change for society, and it shines through clearly in this show. It will be so much fun to check out the newest one next year and make comparisons!

What are you grateful for today?

Here is this week’s list of poems, shorts stories, essays, comic strips, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Hundred-Year-Old Thanksgiving Poem. Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers!

Snuggle. There’s a lot of truth to this.

Workin’ the Poll via MeghanSaraK‬. This is an important thing to read with the election in the U.S. coming up soon. I hope all of my readers in the States will be going out to vote. I also hope that you won’t have to wait in line too long for it.

6 Horror Movies Perfect for Halloween You May Not Know via ‪K8Tilton‬. I haven’t seen any of these movies yet, but I’m hoping to change that soon. How about you?

The Red Strings of Fate. This is one of the best science fiction short stories I’ve read in ages.

Inventor of the Photobomb via nazmaniatweet‬. These stories about someone the blogger once knew were absolutely hilarious. They made me want to photobomb a picture…although I don’t think I’ll be doing it anytime soon.

What have you been reading?

I wanted to talk about something lighthearted today. With Thanksgiving peeking around the corner, dessert is on my mind.

While I’m not a big fan of sweet potatoes with marshmallows baked on top of them, turkey, or stuffing, I’ve never met a pie that I didn’t like.

The nice thing about Thanksgiving is that there’s normally at least one pie at the end of your meal.

My family usually had pumpkin and/or ground cherry pie for dessert on big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Most people haven’t heard of ground cherries before, so I’ll try to describe what they taste like to you. They are tart like cranberries, sweet like pineapple, and have a texture that is something like a soft tomato.

People seem to either love them or hate them. I wasn’t a big fan of this dessert the first few times I tried it, but now I really like it.

My grandmother made “pumpkin” pie with what I believe was butternut squash instead of an actual pumpkin. It has a firmer and more flavourful texture that works really well for this pie, although this did mean that I was slightly disappointed when I tasted real pumpkin pie later on in life. The differences between them are subtle but important.
These days I like to have lemon meringue pie on special occasions. The slight tartness of the lemon filling reminds me just a little of ground cherries. That filling is balanced out nicely with the lightly sweet meringue and flaky crust.

What kinds of desserts do you like to eat during the holidays? Whatever they are, I hope you get to have a slice if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend!

This is the story of a girl who tries to help a tiny pilot find his way home again. That’s all I can tell you about it without giving away spoilers, but I thought it was really well done.

I was especially impressed by how many different emotions the characters shared with the audience without ever speaking a single word. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I really love this style of cinematography.

An automated DM (direct message) is a private message that an account sends to you as soon as you follow it.

They are usually used to promote something the account holder is selling like a book or an album. While some DMs don’t follow this rule, all of them are impersonal spam.

Here’s the thing: Twitter is a social media site. People use it to make new friends, share their thoughts, and stay up-to-date on current events. Trying to exploit this to market your product is an excellent way to annoy or even alienate 98% of the people you meet.

As an author, I understand the urge to reach out to potential new readers. I’ve found new readers on Twitter. I’ve also bought multiple books that I first heard about from other tweeps, but it was never due to the author telling me to buy their stuff.

In fact, an automatic DM is one of a handful of things that will prompt me to immediately unfollow someone. It leaves a horrible first impression that is hard to shake off.

Why have I purchased all of those books, then?

Because their authors didn’t make their Twitter streams or their private messages into nonstop commercials. Yes, they shared links when their newest book came out and occasionally mentioned older projects as well.

Most of the time, though, they talked about all of the other things that were going on in their lives. Some of them shared hilarious stories about the  naughty things their pets did, while others talked about more serious subject matters like grief or recovering from child abuse.

They retweeted other people’s links regularly. I can’t count the number of times that I discovered a new author, blog, or Twitter handle to follow because someone chose to share something that they enjoyed.

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Just as importantly, they kept tabs on their followers lives as well. They regularly responded to people who asked them questions or said something they found interesting.

I often saw them cheer for friends who had finally reached a big goal and support others who were going through a hard time.

In short, they were genuine and generous.

So please don’t send out an automatic DM when you gain a new follower any more than you would use pop-ups on your website.

Get to know people as individuals instead.

Build your following one person and one friendly interaction at a time.

Don’t rush it.

Twitter isn’t a race.

It’s more like a party. Slow down, relax, and enjoy the festivities. Nobody is going home anytime soon.

Here is this week’s list of comic strips, essays, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Clean Room, Clean Mind. I’ve never done this, but now I want to start. The last panel was my biggest reason for wanting to give this a try.

Free Spirits and Happiness via LisaShambrook. The Swedish tale the author talks about was my favourite part of this post. I’d never heard it before, but it was a good one. The picture above reminds me of this link a little for reasons I can’t fully explain.

Make America Bake Again. Baking is actually one of the ways I’m planning to spend my time this upcoming winter. It’s nice to see that other people are interested in it as well.

How I Found Joy in Negativity via SarahBrentyn‬. What a fantastic and refreshing post.

When I was 16. Who someone is when they’re a teenager isn’t always the same kind of person they are years later. I’m willing to admit that my opinions and ideas have changed a lot since I since graduated from high school. Is anyone else willing to admit the same?

From What A Black Woman Wishes Her Adoptive White Parents Knew:

This is my adoptive family, my kin. A loud, passionate, stubborn mixture of people who don’t look anything alike.

From A Plea for Poetry via guineapig66:

I write this both as a poet and as a lover of poetry. Give it a chance. No one demands any more that you learn a long poem, stanza by stanza, threatening detention or a rap on the knuckles if you fail. You have the option to choose what to read, what to enjoy.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Unsplash.

This is a guest post from Steve Johnson. You can read his previous guest post for my blog here. 

Is Your Work Life Out of Balance?

There can be no question that the workplace admires and looks up to those who work harder. However, there is such a thing as working too hard (and doing so intentionally). A workaholic would be someone who had taken their level of work to a point where it was actually unhealthy and damaging to other aspects of their life. If you are concerned that you might be doing just that then you might want to examine your day-to-day life and see which aspects of your workday are creating imbalance.
A professional had this to say about the matter:

Many of us believe that the best way to get more work done is to work more hours. But the reality is that we’re more productive when we build in intermittent periods of renewal during our day.

-Stephanie Marston, a motivational speaker, best-selling author and a stress and resiliency expert.

How to Tell if Your Work Life is Out of Balance: Signs and Symptoms

There is such a fine line between working hard and being industrious that it can be tricky to expertly mark out exactly when one has taken their work life over the limit. Listed below are a couple signs that you can watch out for. If you see yourself doing several of the following then it’s time to reconsider your day-to-day schedule and just how you prioritize and balance work against the rest of your life:

1.     You keep putting yourself in a position where you are “overbooked.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a normal, average work week contains forty work hours. There’s nothing wrong with doing more than that from time to time, but working excessively high hours week after week showcases that your work life is out of balance.

2.     You’ve gotten out of shape.

No job should make a person unhealthy. If you’ve noticed bad eating habits, excessive time sitting at the desk, not enough time devoted to exercise, not enough breaks being taken, then work has likely become too high of a priority for you.

3.     You’re bent on perfection.

Your work life might be out of balance if you are constantly nervous, anxious, or worrying about attaining perfection. You will actually have a higher likelihood of missing your target or flubbing a project if you are too nervous or anxious about it.

4.     You simply work too much.

Some who prioritize work over other life activities do so by simply working too many hours a week. The real key is to make one’s targets and achieve good production in less hours, not just work more hours. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released last year, more than 25 million Americans — 20.5 percent of the total workforce — reported they worked at least 49 hours a week in 1999. Eleven million of those said they worked more than 59 hours a week. This tendency to work too much is especially prevalent in the U.S.

5.     You’re working around the clock.

Leave work at work. If you’re bringing your work home with you then that’s a clear sign that work has overtaken the rest of your life. When you’re home it’s time to concentrate on other activities. When you’re at work then you can concentrate on work with zeal and passion. In order to get through your daily tasks more quickly, seek help from your coworkers. Perhaps you can team up to tackle projects together. That way you can all achieve goals faster, share the responsibility, and engage in rewarding teamwork. You might also find that a coworker has some free time at work and would welcome another easy task or two. When you all work together, you can leave the office feeling good about what you’ve accomplished.

6.     You do not have a social life.

People who work too much also tend to distance themselves from those who they care about the most. Work becomes such an important part of their life that they sacrifice other things that are important so they can work more. If this is occurring for you then this is a sure sign that work has begun to take too high a priority in your life.
There is no doubt that working hard, being productive, and achieving your goals and targets are all good ambitions. However, there are extremes to this as there is with anything else. If you think work has taken over your life, then it is time to double back and reassess your priorities.
This is not a difficult thing to do. All you needs to do is re-organize how you spend your time.  When work is taking over simply spend less time working. Say “No” more often. Don’t spend as much time at the workplace. Don’t take your work home with you. Spend more time with friends, family members, and loved ones. Spend more time on your hobbies. Get more exercise. Create more hobbies. Get out and about in the city or countryside for some rest and relaxation. With a healthier and happier heart and mind you will find that you can achieve everything you want to achieve at work without having to go over the top with it.

Projet de fin d’études – 4e année Animation 3D – Automne from LISAA on Vimeo.

Why do the seasons change? How does it happen?

We know the answers to these questions from a scientific perspective. This short film looks at them from a more imaginative approach.

I once read a children’s story about a supernatural artist who affected the weather every day by drawing beautiful pictures of clouds that then came to life here on Earth. It’s fun to assume that he works at this same shop. Perhaps his desk is off in the corner, just beyond the reach of the camera.