Celebrating the Holidays after 70
- Katharine Esty
- 27 minutes ago
- 4 min read
New Challenges, New Roles, More Fun
When we were younger, preparing for the holidays felt like organizing for Desert Storm or D-Day. Most of us took on five or more extra projects during the season. We usually sent cards with personalized messages, decorated our homes both inside and out, bought and made presents for our families and friends. Additionally, we prepared holiday dinners and hosted guests for days on end, all while juggling our regular lives and jobs. Just surviving was a challenge.
Many of us paid a price for overdoing it. I got sick, I got irritable, and I fell asleep at the dinner table.
Let me share one example of my holiday craziness before I suggest how to make holidays more enjoyable. For years, I would make sugar cookies from scratch, cutting them into various shapes and decorating them with four different colors of icing. Each cookie took me about five minutes, and the entire process took three days to complete. However, once done, they looked too beautiful to eat, and by January, they were hard enough to break our teeth.
Changes
I, perhaps like many of you, went along performing the usual holiday traditions for decades until one day I woke up and realized that maybe I could stop doing certain parts of the holidays that no longer worked for me. I worried about how the family would feel. Realizing I had choices and could make significant changes in the holiday routine has made the celebrating the holidays much better for me.
Roles we give up
By the age of 70 or 80, many of us are no longer the ones managing our families’ celebrations or hosting all the festivities. After decades of juggling and directing all the moving parts of the holidays, we have passed these roles to our children or younger friends. While we usually feel a sense of relief, we can also feel a bit bereft. In my case, these changes in roles happened very naturally when we sold our house and moved into a retirement community.
Ways to simplify
In my mid-seventies, I realized I didn’t have the oomph to keep up all the traditions, and I needed to do less. I stopped making those elaborate sugar cookies that took three days. In some years, I didn’t send out my holiday cards until February or March, and was happy to find the sky didn’t fall. Now that I often travel for the holidays, I sometimes skip putting up my small tree, and that’s okay too.
When I asked a group of women at my retirement home, “What do you find most challenging about the holidays now?” they responded in unison with “the presents.” Their reasons varied, ranging from dissatisfaction with the gifts they gave to concerns about spending way beyond their budgets.
Simplifying gift-giving has been the most important change we’ve made in my family. We all know that “Holidays are not about presents but presence,” yet we still found ourselves overwhelmed by large piles of gifts.
Implementing a family Secret Santa was a huge step toward making our celebrations more relaxed and fun. In November, Santa — aka my son Jed — sends each adult in the family the name of another adult. Each of us is then responsible for choosing a gift for that one person. This way, instead of buying gifts for eight people, we each only need to buy one. However, we continue to give gifts to the grandchildren and our first great-grandchild as we please.
What Doesn’t Change when Celebrating the Holidays
I still love so much about the holiday gathering just the way it is: the meals, the music, the walks, the family games, the reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I love unpacking and displaying each of my cherished nativity scenes — the small Provençal village I bought in 1956, the beautiful blue and yellow set from Portugal, and all the others I’ve collected from around the world. I put them out even though none of my family will be here to see them. I do it just for myself. Be sure to hold onto the parts of the holidays that hold meaning for you.
New Roles
I have found even more magic in the holidays by embracing some new, age-appropriate roles. Let me share them with you.
Receiver
As the saying goes, “It is better to give than to receive.” However, we need receivers. After a lifetime of giving and hosting during the holidays, it’s now our turn to sit back and become skilled receivers. A good receiver accepts gifts with more than a rote, “thank you very much.” We show our appreciation for all the effort and care that givers have made. Additionally, we let them know how much we are enjoying ourselves. That makes their day.
Attention-giver
Undivided attention is something we all need, yet it’s often hard to find at large family gatherings — especially in noisy families like mine, where people talk excitedly and frequently interrupt each other. Taking time for one-on-one conversations with each grandchild and other guests has become a highlight of my holidays. I often suggest to one of them that we move to a quieter room for a short chat. This allows me to listen carefully and provide my full, undivided attention. Those intimate moments make a huge difference.
Connector
We all benefit from being connected to our family histories. My grandchildren love to hear stories about their grandfather and other family members, even those whom they barely remember. I find that sharing these memories is uplifting for me, too, as it allows me to talk about my loved ones who are no longer with us. A highlight of the holidays can be looking through old photo albums and watching family videos together. Being a connector to our shared past is a natural role for older generations and a part of our responsibility.
Letting go of old roles brings both joy and relief. Taking on new roles reinvigorates the celebration. Holding on to what is precious from the past gives meaning to our lives.
Happy Holidays.
