A Simple Christmas – Christmas Parties

Vanilla Dream, Winter Tree Landscape Photography

We definitely do not spread ourselves thin when it comes to holiday festivities. When Darren’s not helping out around the studio he works for a corporation with lots of departments and enough Christmas parties to keep us busy right up until the end of the season. Instead we choose the one, maybe two events that would give us the biggest bang for our time-and-energy-buck. Usually the celebrations that are less fancy, smaller, and have many of the people we want to raise a glass with are the ones that win out. We go for low key and good company, so there’s no stress of getting dolled up and we have lots of time to socialize with his work friends instead of spending the evening having awkward conversations with people we won’t see again until next year’s party.

When our friends have parties we try to go, even if it’s just dropping in for a drink. Outside our family these are the people that matter the most to us so we definitely try to spread the holiday joy but with a relaxed approach. To maintain our sanity we do our best to only attend one get together each weekend and almost never go to out of town events, though there are a few exceptions. Good friends will understand and see us often anyways.

This year we added a new Christmas party to our list, the one hosted by our dance instructors. Darren and I have been taking social dance lessons for almost a year now, just as a fun thing for the two of us to do together. And when we heard there would be a Christmas dance we knew it would be the perfect thing for us to do – for us. Our dance instructors wouldn’t have cared too much if we didn’t go, they had close to 100 other people attend. We didn’t have any friends that were going either so the evening was purely about us and it was fantastic. We had such a great time I think every year we’ll try to do something that’s just for us.

We put a lot of our focus on our studio New Year’s party. It’s a party for the two of us that often happens between Christmas and New Year’s and is our way of celebrating all the amazing things that have happened this past year and all the adventures we’re planning for the year to come. We work it in around all the other goings-on of the season but it’s definitely an important part of the holidays and our business.

The Result – We get to see friends that are really important to us, wish them a happy holiday, and really focus on the people that we care about.

Make it Your Own – Get out the calendar and your holiday party list and start weeding through it. If three of your friends are all hosting celebrations with the same group of people then choose to just go to one. Only schedule one event per weekend and if there’s anyone that you can’t get together with because of it then make plans to hang out in the New Year.

Are Christmas parties an important part of your holiday season? How do you balance getting together with others, with doing all the other things on your list?

ALL SIMPLE CHRISTMAS POSTS

• A Simple Christmas – Getting Festive
• A Simple Christmas – Christmas Parties
• A Simple Christmas – Trimmings
• A Simple Christmas – Feasting
• A Simple Christmas – Family
• A Simple Christmas – Gifts
• A Simple Christmas – How to Simplify Your Christmas