This Is What Really Goes Into The ‘Exhausting’ Christmas Magic Parents Create Each Year |
For these families, labour-intensive holiday magic is totally worth the work.
Christmas trees, gingerbread houses and decorative light displays are some of the most common highlights of the festive season each year. For some particularly enthusiastic parents, however, those sorts of traditions are… well, let’s just say quaint, pedestrian and basic.
Instead of settling for run-of-the-mill, there are parents going all out: they spend hours, days and, in some cases, weeks pulling together elaborate or uniquely thoughtful holiday traditions.
Sometimes it involves digging deep and reimagining what the holidays can really be about for your own family – which is less about the lists and things acquired and more about the experiences you have together.
Unsurprisingly, creating this magic still involves sleepless nights, early mornings and messes galore, something many parents, and especially mothers will recognise.
HuffPost spoke with parents about their favourite magical holiday traditions and the extra miles they often go to to create that magic each year – and they shared which ones were totally worth the exhaustion.
The Great Gift Heist
For the past six years, Baruch Labunski’s family in Toronto, Ontario, has engaged in a holiday scavenger hunt they’ve dubbed “The Great Gift Heist”.
Preparation for the annual event, which Labunski told HuffPost has “spiralled into a full-blown production,” begins days in advance and replaces simply putting gifts under a holiday tree in the Labunski household.
Instead, gifts are hidden throughout the house and even outside, which, as you can imagine, requires quite a bit of time and effort to arrange. And did we mention that the Labunskis take this event very seriously?
That includes preparing elaborate fake riddles, decoy gift boxes, and clues that lead to hidden gifts, all while the rest of us are merely focused on getting those darn gifts wrapped in time for the big day.
“For the first few nights, my spouse and I hide the gifts for the kids, but by the third or fourth night, the kids take turns hiding smaller gifts for us,” Labunski said. “The gifts are adorable little surprises, handwritten notes or silly trinkets, and their hiding of gifts brings so much laughter.”
The Labunski children were 5 and 8 years old........