Dec. 05--If you're like me, you approach December with an eye toward what you won't do, as much as what you will.
I won't max out my Target card. I won't attempt a homemade gingerbread house. I won't buy a Furby.
This year I'm adding a few more items to my Won't Do list. I've spent a fair number of hours absorbing terrible holiday advice -- through magazine articles, social media posts, publicists pitching seasonal stories -- and this year I'm vowing to do none of it.
I hope you'll join me.
--I won't eat a small meal before attending holiday parties and sip plenty of water once I get there to avoid overindulging.
I like overindulging. I like it especially well in December when the offerings upon which to overindulge include pie and eggnog and Champagne.
A small meal and plenty of water will not slow my certain march toward gluttony. Never once have I grabbed that second slice of pecan pie out of hunger or returned to the punch bowl out of thirst. I overindulge because it's there and it tastes good.
I will skip that superfluous small meal before I leave the house because I will be eating a small meal when I arrive. It's called brie. And I won't be washing it down with water.
--I won't calculate the number of hours I would need to spend downhill skiing to burn off the meal I just enjoyed.
Another year, another expert urging us to hang our heads in shame for flagrantly surpassing our recommended daily allowance of calories.
The Huffington Post even offers a handy slide show spelling out how to burn off the 3,000 calories we pack in, on average, at our holiday feasts. A 13-hour walk would do it, as would a four-hour run or a six-and-a-half-hour spin on the elliptical. A 17-hour yoga class or nine-hour jaunt down the slopes would do the trick too.
Or we could sit on the couch with the family members we're lucky to see and talk about life or love or politics or Kim Kardashian. We could read a book to a child if there's one nearby. We could see if there's any brie left.
We could give thanks, in a million different ways, for the calories we just consumed instead of contemplating superhuman feats to destroy them.
--I won't transfer store-bought cookies onto a cute holiday platter and pass them off as homemade.
We have a favorite story in my family involving my grandma and some cookies made lovingly by my hilarious, giant-hearted late aunt Merry Lou. "Oh, Merry Lou," my grandma sang when she bit into the treat. "These are almost as good as store-bought!"
High praise from a woman who wouldn't dream of spending her family's hard-earned cash on such luxuries. And an accurate statement, at that: Stores make good stuff.
Humans make good stuff too. If you're one of those humans whose stuff tastes better than a store's stuff -- and (this is a big and) -- you enjoy baking, you should bake stuff. If baking is not your thing, you should not give into real or imagined pressure to pretend that it is.
"I once read a cookbook author who said if the bakery bakes a better pie than you could ever make, you owe it to your guests to serve that instead of your own," my friend Patty told me recently.
You owe it to yourself to leave it in its original container.
Holidays, for all sorts of reasons, have become freighted with guilt. We're supposed to make them magical and memorable for our loved ones, equal parts Pinterest and North Pole.
We should indulge our children's wish lists, even as we teach them happiness can't be found in material possessions. We should create elegant feasts, even as we live in fear of the dreaded calorie. We should do it all, bake it all, decorate it all and attend it all.
This year, I'm just planning to enjoy it all. Starting, of course, with the brie.
hstevens@tribpub.com
Twitter @heidistevens13
