Christmas as we all know can be hectic, but it does not have to be. In my line of thinking, for the most part, it is only as hectic as you make it.

Sure, there is going to be a certain amount of stress involved especially if you have children. The reason for this is because you have to manage to live your day to day life, prepare your home for the holidays and then somehow, squeeze all of your kids Christmas school activities in there somewhere.

The good and bad news for some is that kids are only in school for a small portion of December, so they can actually be recruited to help in some of the things you have to do to prepare for the holidays. 

This article is designed to give you some time saving tips and tricks so that it doesn’t have to be so stressful. 

One of the first things you want to do is try to simplify the gifts:

White Elephant gift giving

It’s almost a way of recycling gifts. This might sound crass and some people would never go for it, but until you try it, you really do not know how much fun it can be, and funny as well. This is not about getting rid of junk that you do not want, you actually should give away something that means something to you which might be an heirloom, or something of personal value to you. This lets the receiver know that you admire them enough to give something that means so much to you.

Dirty Santa

It is another form of this but the difference is, you actually do give away something that you consider to be of no value to you or something that is just not your style, that maybe you were given as a gift at one point and threw it in a closet. Dirty Santa is often done more so at office Christmas parties.

When it comes to wrapping gifts you could simply use whatever paper items you already have at home instead of spending a ton of money on gift wrap. You could use things such as magazine pages, newspaper, construction paper. I also like to reuse gift bags that have been given to me from previous years.

Just make sure that if there is a tag on the gift bag with someone else’s name in it, you will want to remove the tag.

Using one gift to wrap another is a good idea as well. For instance if you have someone who loves socks, you can buy them a really cool pair of socks and stuff a gift card to their favorite place to shop inside.

Another idea is that if you bought someone a cookbook for Christmas, you could wrap it in a chef’s apron. Be creative, it really does work!

Simplifying Christmas dinner is easy as well.

Some of the things you can do to prepare a head of time is like, any of the vegetables like raw vegetables that need to be cut up or chopped, you can do this a day or two ahead of time and place them in Ziploc bags and place them in the refrigerator till you need them.

We all know there are going to be dishes that you are making that freeze and reheat beautifully, so trying to make these dishes the day before and just reheating them before dinner will save you stress.

It will not save you time, but the stress factor will be reduced greatly. If you have never prepared a turkey or just do not think you are going to have time to do it, there are places where you can order your turkey and go get it the day before.

Have all of your guests bring their favorite dish or one they are known for doing excellent at. Not only does this allow your guest to show off their culinary skills, its less work you have to do.

For example, I cannot go to a Christmas dinner without taking my "Scampi A La Sauce Du Chef". They are a favorite among everyone and I am always told this is what I have to bring because no one can do it better. Which makes me feel good.

This particular idea is a really good one, if you do not have to worry about your kids destroying the table.

You could set the table a day or two in advance so that is out of the way.

Have a very merry Christmas.