How to Embrace Your Inner Santa

When Christmas is approaching, it takes an eggnog-laced shot of caffeine and an attitude adjustment to embrace your inner Santa, making gift giving a joy not a duty, and gift receiving merely icing on the Christmas cake.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Credit card
• Money
• Computer with Internet access
• Transportation
• Time
• Eggnog Latte (or caffeinated beverage of choice)

1. Get organized early! OK, so it may be Halloween at home, but put on your symbolic Santa hat and make a list, check it twice, decide who's naughty or nice. Cross any duty gift recipients off your list. Santa only gives with love and kindness, you can do the same.
2. Think about the people on your list while waiting at stoplights, while picking up your kids at soccer, while you are supposed to be paying attention during staff meetings. Make this a meditation on the special people in your life, but without the chanting.
3. Shop in your head, not the mall. Consider the unique or unusual aspects of the people on your list (Cousin Herbert’s bone obsession, your husband’s secret passion for regency romances), and do a subject search through your synapses for the perfect present.
4. Go for it once you have a list! Shop in person with an eggnog latte or a peppermint cocoa to go. Prioritize your list geographically and you can come home feeling good about a mission accomplished without fuss, bother or road rage.
5. Take that latte home and shop online! Santa gets a lot done that way, giving the reindeer a much needed rest before the big day. Online shopping can save time, gasoline and the trauma of arm wrestling someone for the last action figure in town.
6. Leave time to wrap beautifully. You will have more Ho Ho Ho in your soul if the gifts you give are a treat to behold before the wrapping is ripped to shreds in a heartbeat.
7. Give your gifts with a grateful heart. You are giving to celebrate the holiday and the recipient. Explain why you thought he or she would like it; let them know you were thinking of them, and not simply choosing at random, buying the only thing left on the shelves or re-gifting something from yesteryear. If it falls flat, don't feel bad, even Santa can't get it right everytime.

Tips & Warnings

• Synapses failing to fire? Search engine on stand by? Whip out the cell phone and call someone who knows the recipient, and ask them what he or she would like.
• Enlist the family in wrapping so that they can get into the spirit, too. Put on music, make cocoa and enjoy the experience, rather than making it another item on the to-do list along with vacuuming out the car and picking up the dog debris.
• Santa would never give a gift he didn’t believe in, so you don’t have to either. If your nephew wants an air rifle and you’re pro-peace, don’t give him one. Buy in accordance with your values and you give more than a present, you promote your agenda.
• If you have artistic talents that would please the recipient, use them, but don’t underestimate the time involved. Rushing a homemade gift steals from the holiday joy; it's better to give it next year than present it sleep-deprived, grumpy and defensive about the quality.
• Waiting to shop until after Thanksgiving guarantees a more festive ritual (if you like holiday music, crowded stores, animatronic singing Santas and tinsel up the wazoo), but shopping before Thanksgiving frees you to enjoy December (and your lunch hours) without worrying about filling those stockings with care.
• Scrooges lurk everywhere. A happy holiday shopper is a walking target to the cynical and hard-boiled; embracing your inner Santa means accepting the joy and rejecting the jaded, taking the good and forgiving the bad, and being a joke to every Ebenezer Scrooge you encounter. When your inner Santa's had enough and there seems no graceful exit, spill your eggnog latte on Scrooge's sophisticated black leather and run for it.
• Considering economics isn’t just smart, it will save your inner Santa from souring. Decide what you can afford and stick with it; overspending gnaws at the soul, causes January stress, February fights and March divorces as the bills pile up (and the expensive gifts are lost, forgotten or broken) and you vow to give up holidays entirely.

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