Seeking Meaningful Holiday Celebrations

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. I remember the childhood magic of unpacking our Christmas decorations every year, the anticipation of eating the candy cane cookies that my dad and I twisted into perfect pink and white hooks, and the joy of finding at least one special present under the tree. For years, I told my parents that someday I would get married at Christmas; eventually, I fulfilled that promise by getting married during the middle of a Michigan snowstorm, a few days after Christmas.

But somewhere along the way, Christmas lost its magic. Gradually, Christmas became a time of endless obligations, grading deadlines for report cards, and a growing list of gifts that needed to be purchased in order to deliver the perfect Christmas.

The birth of our children helped to turn around my Christmas slump. When our kids were finally old enough to do more than put wrapping paper into their mouths, their excitement over decorations, stockings, and finding that special gift under the tree became my excitement.

But even that joy doesn't make up for the pressure that I often feel at the height of the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because we love having guests and cooking for others, for several years we launched the season by hosting Thanksgiving dinner. We spent weeks planning and cleaning and finally, on the day before, preparing a full spread for as many friends and family members as were able to make it to our Indiana home. At the end of the day, we were always thankful that we were able to go to sleep in our own beds without having to drive home from some other location.

Then two years ago, a couple of months before our second Thanksgiving in Texas, my husband suggested that we look into camping during the Thanksgiving holiday. After all, we didn't have any family around, the weather was going to be fall-camping perfect, and we had some extra days off of school. It was the perfect time for us to plan a trip several hours away from Houston.

So, we did it. We packed up all of our easily transportable outdoor cooking equipment and loaded it into our camper, bought the fixings for a Thanksgiving dinner for four, and headed down the Gulf Coast, settling on a state park less than two hours north of Corpus Christi. We spent the day before Thanksgiving driving down to Corpus and then all the way to Padre Island National Seashore, sightseeing and watching our kids pick up seashells along the coastline. The next day we enjoyed a small -- but complete -- Thanksgiving dinner, and on that Friday, we didn't even realize we had missed Black Friday shopping.

Last Thanksgiving, we made reservations just south of Dallas, and although it was cooler than our Thanksgiving on the coast, we once again enjoyed the escape from civilization. We were joined by friends, their two young daughters, and my sister-in-law and her family. This time, instead of spending our Black Friday on the road driving home, we spent it hiking, hopping across a river, and exploring fossilized dinosaur tracks.

It was official. Campsgiving was here to stay.

It is so easy to let the season from Thanksgiving to New Year's take on a life of its own. We convince ourselves that everything has to be perfect. We over plan, overspend, and overstress. We spend time with people we would prefer not to see and are so busy being busy that we don't spend quality time with the ones we want to see most. We say that we are thankful but don't demonstrate that thankfulness. We say that, "Jesus is the reason for the season," but then we fill up the space under the tree with things that we don't need while others receive nothing. We make New Year's resolutions but mentally prepare our contingency plans for when those resolutions fail.

But what if we just said, "No!" to all of the things that detract from the holiday celebrations and distract us from each other?

We discovered a holiday contentment that we had never before experienced when we made the decision to escape it all and camp for Thanksgiving. I wasn't freaking out about the house; we weren't scouring newspaper ads for things we didn't need and -- although we ate a huge Thanksgiving dinner -- we hadn't been bored. We didn't sit around eating food we didn't need before and after dinner out of boredom, because we were enjoying life in the great outdoors. It's refreshing. It's been so refreshing, that in addition to Campsgiving this year near New Orleans, we have also planned a Christmas camping trip to southwestern Texas. We intend to leave after church and a quiet Christmas morning and return just in time to ring in the New Year.

I'm not suggesting that the answer to all of our holiday busyness is to just drop everything and head outdoors. I spent most of my life in the cold, snowy north; that kind of outdoor living is only for the truly dedicated. But we do need to give ourselves permission to cut the things that prevent us from truly celebrating. Maybe we vow to buy fewer gifts and be truly intentional about the gifts that we do buy (and stick to it). Maybe we focus on experiences like zoo and museum memberships instead of more toys that will just get broken and forgotten. Maybe we volunteer at a homeless shelter and spend our time serving those who have nothing instead of sitting around watching football and holiday movies. Maybe we sit around the kitchen table to play a game instead of allowing everyone to retire to their own corners with the electronic devices of their choosing.

Instead of seeking the perfect holiday experience, maybe it is time to seek to better know our loved ones, to show compassion for those who are suffering, and to glorify the God who made our end-of-year celebrations possible.

But we can still enjoy a piece of pie.

Witten by Sarah Styf

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The Self-inflicted Curse of Creativity

I tend to be called creative a lot.

From the moment I chose design as a major in college, I sealed my professional fate as a "creative" in the industry.

Fast forward four years, a business minor, and way too many Red Bull-fueled late nights later, and I found myself as a proud ... college graduate who was living at home with my parents. Sound familiar?

Thanks to my decision to pursue a creative career, most people would assume I was living at home because I couldn't find a job.

The thing is, I wasn't actively looking for one. Instead, I was trying my hardest to create my own path in the form of a full-time freelance career.

Needless to say, I learned more in that following year than during my four and half years at college (don't judge me; I picked up that business minor a little late).

What followed was a decade of what I like to call "productive fumbling."

Throughout this time, I made a living by illustrating posters, building brands, designing websites, laying out apps, writing articles, teaching kids to sing, and doing pretty much anything else you can think of. I've even gotten paid to make weird sounds with my mouth while five other guys sing. True story.

Believe me. My goal here isn't to brag. It's simply to share that I know what it takes to create a career out of creativity (say that ten times fast).

Throughout this time, I can say one thing with 100-percent confidence: being creative is hard. Let me rephrase that: being creative is easy. Applying creativity is hard.

Anyone (with enough practice and access to Photoshop) can paint a pretty picture or tell a clever joke. What sets professional creatives apart is their ability to apply creativity in the real world. You know, the one where real people live and real businesses operate? We're talking about using creativity for more than just a clever Halloween costume once a year.

In some ways, I've always been fascinated with how I can apply my creativity instead of keeping it confined to my own sketchbook. This fascination started way back in college.

As a junior at a small liberal arts school in the middle of Nowhere, Missouri, I came across these two main problems:

1. No one ever wanted to come visit, and

2. There was a severe lack of "creative inspiration."

What started as an in-class illustration project turned into a chance for me to kill both of these birds with one stone. Naturally, I steered into the skid.

I decided to use my indisputable wit in order to create a series of fictional tourism posters for Kirksville, Missouri.

Some of the greatest hits included "Kirksville Date Night: Dinner and a Movie," showcasing a Redbox (remember those?) outside of a McDonald's as well as, "Thousand Hills State Park: Now with Even Less E. coli!" printed above a scenic lake.

After completing this eight-poster series for a grade, I ended up sharing them online. I honestly wasn't ready for what happened next.

A few weeks later, the posters went semi-viral, racking up over 11,000 views as well as requests for custom-commissioned posters. Our university even reached out, asking if they could use them for the annual spring fling.

After this experience, I considered each and every project an opportunity to learn, experiment, and set myself up for future success. Even as an inexperienced designer, I realized I could make student projects work a lot harder for me in the long run if I just thought bigger.

At this point in my life, I'm focused on applying my creativity to things that connect existing dots rather than blindly creating more. More specifically, I want to help others connect over shared ideas.

For me, the end result doesn't matter. Whether I share a piece of writing, design a mobile app, or launch an entire company, if it helps to create a smaller world connected by ideas, then I know I'm applying my creativity in a successful way.

What do you create, and what do you think it says about you?

Written by William Frazier

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