It’s the most wonderful time of the year…and one of the most stressful. Tama Fortner joins Julie Lyles Carr for a special episode on relieving some of the hurry in the holiday and how to be intentional with how we celebrate Christmas.
Listen to “Simply Christmas w/Tama Fortner” on Spreaker.
Interview Links:
Find Tama Online: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Book: Simply Christmas: A Busy Mom’s Guide to Reclaiming the Peace of the Holidays
Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: You’re listening to the AllMomDoes podcast where you’ll find encouragement, information, and inspiration for the life you’re living, the kids you’re raising, the romance you’re loving, and the faith you’re growing. I’m your host, Julie Lyles Carr. Let’s jump into this week’s episode.
I know it’s hard to believe but Christmas really is just around the corner, but these are ideas that if you’re listening to this in the Christmas season, or you’re finding this maybe in July, this is going to help you when it comes to looking toward the holiday season. Tama Fortner, thank you so much for being with me.
Tama Fortner: Thank you, Julie, for having me. I’m so thrilled to be here.
Julie Lyles Carr: Tama, you are who we are looking to for all things, organization and organization and Christmas. I hope that that does not feel like a lot of pressure, but you know, you really need to help us get ready for everything. So tell us where you are, where you live in the country, your family, all those details.
Tama Fortner: Yes. So I am just outside of Nashville. I am married to Jeff. My husband, we’ve been married 23 years. We have two kiddos. Lauren is a senior in college and Kaylor is a sophomore. I have to stop and think about that. But yeah, so we’re figuring out this whole empty nest thing and I’m loving it.
Julie Lyles Carr: So take me back before, I got to tell you Tama, when I look back at the Christmases, I have pulled off in the past, I have created a lot of pressure for myself. You know, I’ve created some levels and some expectations that even though I still want things to be magical and fun and all of that, wow. I set a bar high. So why do we do that to ourselves as women, as the keeper of the holidays?
I mean, why are we letting it get to such a Seuss’esk Disney’esk, you know, all the shop windows in New York city kind of event at this point.
Tama Fortner: I think that’s a lot of it right there. See so much around us and it looks so perfect and so wonderful and it makes everybody smile. And we want to recreate that in our homes.
But what we don’t see is like, you know, that beautiful Christmas window at Macy’s, we don’t see the piles of mess that went into making that. You only see that little snapshot and you don’t see the bigger picture of reality. But we try to recreate that perfect little snapshot and you know what? Isn’t perfect. It’s messy and it’s interrupted. And as moms, we need to be able to say, that’s okay
Julie Lyles Carr: You have put these thoughts together and your new book ,. What about the Christmas season made you want to dedicate the entire effort of writing something toward that? What was it in your own history and your own heart that made you think? Wow, I think I could really help some women here.
Tama Fortner: You know, as I mentioned, my kiddos are college age now, and I’ve had a chance to look back and think about the things that were really important to us. The things that we loved about Christmas, and those are not the things that are so often pushed, honestly.
And because my kids are older, I have a little more time to do the actual writing, and hopefully offer moms some, some tips while they’re still in those littles years to make their Christmases more simple, but also more special. And really the reason I focused on Christmas is because it was such a stressful time for me. Our family so, so blessed. My husband and I, all our grandparents were around when my kids were little. And so that meant though we would go to seven or eight Christmas celebrations within like two or three days. And it was crazy and wonderful and insane all at the same time. And I pushed myself to present a certain image that, you know, I knew what I was doing or that I had this whole shopping, cooking, decorating, make it all just perfect. And as you said, Disney image figured out, and I really didn’t and I just want to tell younger moms that it’s okay. Not to have it all perfect and figured out. And in sometimes it’s actually better..
Julie Lyles Carr: Absolutely. You know, we too have been through several years where we were running from the Monday after Thanksgiving, until we would skid in exhausted the night of Christmas when everything had been done. Now, part of that was because I served on a church staff for quite a while, many years where those three days, the 23rd and the 24th in particular, we’re bananas. I mean, multiple services, all kinds of responsibility. And then all of the events that were leading up to that, both part of our church community situation, my husband’s corporate situation, my other business endeavor situations, and our kids, things like, special dance performances and parties for this team and all of that kind of stuff.
I know it’s really hard to say a solid no, and the things that are happening in that way. And yet I know too those toddler years felt really busy for me around the holiday season. Just try and make everything happen, and Christmas is such a big deal for a lot of kids and they have a lot of hopes and expectations. But things seem to even get a little bit wilder as our kids got older and there were more and more events and more concerts and all the things to go to.
How can we begin to scale back on that a little bit? And of course, I didn’t want my kid to be the one who wasn’t going to perform in the whatever holiday pageant. And yet, I got to tell you Tama, there were times where I thought I can not wait for the Christmas season to be over. I can not have one more thing on the calendar.
What can we do to mitigate some of this?
Tama Fortner: Yeah, I completely understand. And, and that’s not what we want at all. We want Christmas to be that special savored, wonderful time of year when we connect with the Savior. But the truth is all the stuff comes at us so fast and furious. And how do you decide what to say yes to and what to say no to, and the practice that I honestly just kind of stumbled into a few years ago, before Thanksgiving or early in the Christmas season, I would sit down with my kids and with my husband, and I, and just ask the question. What do you remember about last Christmas that was so special? What made Christmas for you? And then let’s look ahead. What are the things that you absolutely want to do?
And then we also ask what are the things you just really don’t want to do? Not optional, not optional. We still have to do them, but it surprised me the answers. And I was able to take those answers and say no to something. People felt like they had to do, but didn’t really want to do. And so then the things that went onto our calendar were things that we all wanted to be there, or at least the majority of us wanted to be there.
It was in agreement. But, but yeah, just that asking the questions. I think we assume, and often we’re wrong about what’s important to those Christmas memories.
Julie Lyles Carr: I think that’s a great point to really ask because so often we can get in the flow and we can feel like we’ve got to meet all these obligations and we don’t stop and ask ourselves. And, and we, I think we’re getting better. I think a lot of women in my world are getting better when it comes to events throughout the year, or looking at their calendar broadly for a year to take a pause and say, okay, wait a minute, what really needs to be on here and what doesn’t. And yet, I still think there’s something in the holiday season where you feel like, well, I’ve got to, because it’s a holiday obligation, it’s really important to do this.
So I think that’s a great point to be preemptive. And to really think ahead before we let things get on the calendar. What are some of your top tips for getting us organized for the holiday season? So that things can be a little more enjoyable, a little seamless if possible, to where we don’t feel like we are coming in just exhausted when we actually arrive at the day that we’re going to celebrate with our family?
Tama Fortner: Yeah. So before I answer that, I want to say that I don’t have all the answers. And I want to say to moms that, you know, it’s okay to feel your way through this and figure out what works for you. So, yeah, I’ve got some tips, but if they don’t work for you, you know, skip them. Find your own thing. For me, I am a list-maker, it needs to be on the calendar and then there needs to be a list because then I can tackle the list. I can plug things into the calendar and know where I have to be when. There’s something about motherhood. My brain doesn’t quite work the way it used to.
Julie Lyles Carr: Amen.
Tama Fortner: So I think I, oh, I’ll remember that. Well, you know what, I’m not going to. So it goes on the calendar. It goes on the list and that really helps to plan.
It’s streamlining the process. That gets a little easier as my kids get older, as we’ve decided not to exchange gifts with certain, you know, brothers and sisters. And now that we’re older, you know, we just, we leave that out and just focus on together time. And then there’s also a couple of things that I do at the end of season that makes next year so much easier.
As I put away the Christmas things, I box them up by room. So, you know, the kitchen goes in one box. The bonus room goes in one box. And there are years that I don’t feel like decorating every room 2020, hello. A lot of those boxes that just didn’t get pulled out. And because everything is kind of a group together, it doesn’t mean my whole house is disrupted when I really just want to do one room, or one tree.
Julie Lyles Carr: Tama, I know this is going to be a controversial question, but I need to know where you stand. I think this is really important theologically. When should we start decorating for Christmas? What is really, when is it really? Okay because we have this debacle in my home, and I’ve got kids who are now married and out of the house and they’re ,creating some of their own traditions. I’ve got kids who are still in the house and they’re expecting things to be done a certain way because that’s the family tradition. One of the key questions that gets wrestled over and over and over. Is it November 1st that ushers in the Christmas season? Or is it after Thanksgiving? We really need your guidance here. Tama, this is really important. I also know that it is a debate that rocks our listeners. So, so we need to know.
Tama Fortner: Oh my goodness. Is it safe to answer this question?
Julie Lyles Carr: Probably not. You should probably turn off the comments on your social media. Maybe we need to do the same thing for the hallmark does social media channels. But, but we’re going to try, I mean, Hey, we can’t be afraid to tackle controversial.
Tama Fortner: Exactly. Let’s, let’s dive into this tough topic. So we have a special situation at our house. My youngest, my son Kaylor, his birthday is November 30th. And so, I have a sister-in-law who’s Christmas who has a Christmas birthday, like just a few days before Christmas. And that was one thing she always talked about it. She, her birthday just got muddled with Christmas. So we decided when my son was born, that his birthday would be his birthday. That Christmas would not bleed over onto it. So at our house, we don’t start Christmas until December 1st. Whatever that weekend is after that. It’s tough to be honest, because that weekend after Thanksgiving is just the perfect downtime to decorate. So I sometimes regret making that decision early on. But that’s kind of the way we roll and, you know, I also say, christmas is kind of a place in your heart. And so if you want to decorate on November 1st, go for it. But yeah, at our house, it’s, it’s December.
Julie Lyles Carr: We usually, and I don’t know how this started, because I can’t imagine that I ever sanctioned this, but somehow it started Tama, that we usually decorate the night of Thanksgiving. Like the minute the last piece of China is put away, then everybody starts hauling out boxes. And I have got to say, as much as I think it’s sweet and the anticipation from a mom’s standpoint, the night of Thanksgiving is a bad call. And yet it happened, it happened so early on that it is something we continue to do. And so for us, the induction of the holiday season for Christmas begins the night of Thanksgiving. That’s how we have a, that’s where we’ve arrived. But I have to tell you there’s a lot of controversy because one of my daughters, she’s already full on into the holiday movies and all the things. Now what’s funny about that daughter is that she is married to a guy who’s originally from Japan, and so they are very minimalist in their decor. They really don’t, that’s just not something he really grew up with and they like more of a clean palette in their home. And so they don’t do as much when it comes to holiday decor at all, except that it goes up really early. So maybe that’s the trade-off.
Tama, talk to me about those family dynamics when it comes to holidays, because it was interesting when my husband and I got married, it was really important to me that Christmas morning be at our house with our babies. And we did our own thing. The way that my kid grown up, they had generally spent the night at his grandparents and woke up to Santa having arrived there. And so Christmas day was always at his grandparents. And it was interesting when we got married to try to meld what our expectations were going to be about all of that. And to both honor family, extended family really well, and at the same time, make sure that we left room for the traditions our family that we were building.
How can we navigate that? Because there can be a lot of pull when you first get married in a particular, when the first babies start coming in, these are the grandbabies and just what everybody is wanting at that time of year. How do you evaluate what needs to be for your family, and the traditions you want to build for the amount of time you have your kids at home?
Because you and I, both, we have kids who are launching. That was our shot, whatever we were going to make the holidays in that time. That was it. And at the same time, make sure that we’re being inclusive of extended family so that it is a season that we celebrate all the people we care about in our lives.
Tama Fortner: You know, that is one of the toughest situations to navigate, especially as newlyweds. And as I mentioned before Jeff and I had all of our grandparents still when we were married. Actually, I think my, my, one of my grandfathers had passed away, but we were still doing all the family celebrations, and, and like you, I wanted that Christmas morning to be just our nuclear family.
And fortunately I had some sisters, and sisters and laws and things who had kind of carved out that tradition ahead ,of me, so that, that made that a little bit easier for me. But there were some tough conversations about, okay, we’re supposed to be two different places on Christmas Eve. How are, how are we going to work in you know, this family that’s a little bit farther away? How are we going to travel? And it really was just sitting down and having conversations with my husband, Jeff, and this is what I want. This is what’s super important to me, but we’ve got to include this. And, and like any issue that comes up in marriage, it’s a little give and take, but then when you step out into the extended family, you’ve got to make sure you have a united front, so because the little comments and the, oh, we’re so glad you finally got here when you’re splitting two Christmas dinners. Yeah, conversation and a united front, when you step out the door are the keys I think.
Julie Lyles Carr: United front. I really like that. And that’s, it’s difficult sometimes to affect because there’s going to have to be compromise. And that’s just part of the navigation of the holiday season, I think; is doing your very best to try to be as present for those that you care about as you can be. And at the same time, Mama’s you got to hear this, when your kids are still in the home, that’s your time, because we’re experiencing firsthand now and, and it’s all working,
it’s all we’re making it happen, but it is interesting when your kids start launching, and if you still have kids at home and you’re still trying to make all the things work and you’ve got all these other now, your children’s in-laws and grandparents of their spouse, and all these different things, it just keeps proliferating.
So I do love that idea of a United front decide what you’re going to do as a family. And that’s something that we’ve told our adult children, right from the start. We’ve said, you guys are now a family and we want to be with you. We will do whatever we need to do and adjust days and all the things, but you have to make your family traditions first.
That’s really important. So if you’re launching that’s a huge gift. You can give them to take a lot of that pressure off. You know, Tama, I think we get really focused sometimes on the actual day of the 25th. And one of the things that we did learn through the years that only worked well when our oldest children were really little, you can’t get away with this past certain ages, but we did make some adjustments, shall I say, to some of the deliveries coming from the north pole, shall I say, when it came to date windows, do you feel like we need to be okay with that? Do you think that that’s something that can work when we have a full calendar and maybe there is a day that it might work a little better if we just took some of the pressure off thinking that it’s got to happen on the 25th?
Tama Fortner: Oh, absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the things my husband and I, as we navigated some of these, these issues, there were some things we couldn’t do anything about. You know, this is not going to happen quite our way. And so we have started kind of keeping a list of things and one of them has to do with that specific day where you want to make sure that we celebrate Christmas as a family, but it doesn’t have to be the 25th. And honestly not to sound too terribly cheesy, but. Christmas is something that we should carry in our heart every day. I actually have a friend who celebrates Christmas in July because all her children are scattered. The holidays are crazy. The airfares are insane. So they have a giant pool party. Santa makes a, an off calendar, vacation appearance in his Hawaiian Santa shirt.
Julie Lyles Carr: And he’s accommodating like that. What a guy, what a guy.
Tama Fortner: He is, and it works for them. They decorate with lights around the pool. And the important thing is the family is Jesus. Is the celebration. Not the date and the trappings of tradition.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. I love that. Okay. Now help us tame the monster. And the monster is all the gifts, the gift giving the wrapping, the presents, the all the things. I have got to tell you, Tama, I’m probably one of the world’s worst. I’ll start off almost every year, and you would think it would be better now that my youngest children aren’t babies anymore. And you would think with the collection of toys, we amassed over the years with eight kids, that there would be a natural stop. And yet now I would be so filled with Christmas juice that I just felt like I had to keep, I just wanted the tree to seem piled. I wanted the aha the overwhelmed moment
when everybody came down in the morning, I wanted all that. And yet now, as you can imagine, the number of kids and then just even the practicality of continuing to buy the next present and the next one. And then I bought an extra thing for that one so now I feel like I need to fill in the gaps for this, that, or the other one.
How do we get the gift giving thing back to a place where it is meaningful and it can seem awesome and extravagant and generous if we want it to, but it, it doesn’t dominate everything that’s going. Because I have been a poor example of this.
Tama Fortner: You know, that is so hard because we want those sparkling eyes when they first see the tree. We want those smiles and I think. And I had a healthiness and my husband is an accountant. So he sets a budget for everything.
Julie Lyles Carr: Kept you real accountable.
Tama Fortner: Accountable. He is the left brain and I am the right brain and together we, we sorta have a full brain. But we also started with not doing as much. We would do that the two to three bigger presents, and then we would fill in with little things. So that’s just kind of the way we started and that’s the way it’s gone forward, but holding myself accountable to that budget it is the biggest thing. And now that my kids are older, we have conversations about, you know, their wishlist. This just doesn’t fit in your wish. You know, this doesn’t fit in the budget.
And we talked to them about, you know, we can do this and then you can add too. And that’s really helped corral it as well. So I don’t know if that that’s the magic answer, but that’s, what’s really helped us is the budget.
Julie Lyles Carr: One thing that my older kids decided to do on their own, which has been really brilliant, and if I would just get on board, it would make, it would make my holidays a lot simpler, is they started drawing each other’s names. Once you hit 18 in our crew, then they’ve developed this whole thing that they draw each other’s names. And it really is phenomenal. I mean, they’ve done an amazing job and it’s so fun to see what everybody has done for one another. Now the caveat is I see. I feel like my kids who are under 18, I’m wanting them to still have the big moment. And then once I give them the big moment, then I’m wanting the other one. You know, it just it’s a snowball. But I do think there’s a lot to be said, and it probably is something we’re going to transition to,
if I had to guess pretty soon is going more to this place of drawing names in a larger family. It just makes a lot of sense. But even if it makes sense on a larger family, it can make sense in a smaller family too, to just try to mitigate some of the stress around all of the financial stress, and just in many ways, sometimes the gift giving thing, eclipses what we really want to be mindful of in the season.
How do we make sure that we continue to elevate this as a remembrance of the birth of Christ? And I know we need to be thoughtful in this because Jesus probably was not born at Christmas. I mean, it really is a reclaimed Roman holiday. And as we know that Jesus was not born in a manger in the midst of snow covered fields, like we just, but boy, we love the image of that and the romance of it, and, and we can leverage it in a great way because it’s a time of the world actually takes a pause and remembers his birth as well. How do we make sure that we keep that central and yet not be relying on all kinds of externals like that holiday concert and the next Christmas concert and the, the Christmas potluck for this and the 17 church services and all the things… like how can we actually make sure that even in all of our striving to celebrate him, we’re actually leaving room to medicate on the fact that he came to earth?
Tama Fortner: Yet. So I am a big proponent of just having conversations. I don’t think Jesus should be tucked away for Sunday mornings or set devotion times. Of course, those are wonderful and necessary. But I love just weaving him into everyday life. So as we’re going along and we see the bell ringer, you know, we, we drop in some money and the kettle and we talk about why we do that, and why we help. Our children have both been blessed, their school adopts a family. And then we do another thing through church and we take them out and shop for other people and give to other people and let them pick out the presents. Involving them in the actual giving process and just turning everything back to God. Every chance you get from, you know, when an ambulance goes by and you lift up a prayer, to hearing a song on the radio and talking about, you know, what that first Noel really meant; it’s just that weaving of God into every moment. It’s in him, that we live and move and have our being, and when we make that our lifestyle. Christmas just gives us so many more opportunities to express our lives that way.
Julie Lyles Carr: I think that one of the things my kids would probably say that was really meaningful to them in the years of growing up were the times that I made the effort, or signed on to allow them to shop for others, help others, operation Christmas child, different things like that, that those were moments that they have all recalled and talked about as being important, which is fascinating because it felt almost a sense of, well, this needs to be compulsory because it’s Christmas. Not that the I’m not saying my heart was wrong. I’m just saying sometimes in all of the busy as a mom, that can be one of the things that you put to the side, because it’s, you’ve got so much going on. But when I listened to them, recall the things, they remember the things that were important,
I realized, wow. That probably should have been a lot closer to the top of the list in terms of holiday events and endeavors that we were undertaking, instead of being something that I was trying to see how much time we might have left to do something like that. So that’s a great encouragement. The book is called Simply Christmas, a busy moms guide to reclaiming the piece of the holidays, and it’s a devotional, which is another way that people can take a pause and make sure that they are keeping their cup filled. Make sure they’re keeping their eyes on what’s important over the holiday season. Tama, where can people connect with you on social media? Get more of your great ideas?
Tama Fortner: So the easiest place is just at my website. It’s www.tamafortner.com. There you’ll find links to all my books, all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, all the good stuff, but yeah, just check out.
Julie Lyles Carr: All right. We’ll send people there. Be sure and check out the show notes where you can find all the good stuff Rebecca put this puts those together each week for us. And so you’re definitely gonna want to check that out this week to connect with Tama. Thank you so much for giving us a pause in the middle of a very busy season and help helping redirect us. Getting this a little more organized and thinking through being intentional about what we want these holidays to look like.
I really appreciate your time today.
Tama Fortner: Thank you so much for having me Merry Christmas to everyone.
Julie Lyles Carr: Merry Christmas to you.
Check out the show notes for all the links, info and other goodness from this week’s episode, with a big thank you to our content coordinator, Rebecca. Hey, check this out, Kim Stewinspire left this awesome review. She said there’s no end to AllMomDoes, and thank God Julie and her guests don’t let us go it alone. I especially enjoyed her episode with Caitlin Crosby and her episode on Motherhood. I highly recommend you tune in and the encourage. Kim Stewinspire, I can’t thank you enough for listening. Thank you so much. It means so much to all of us here at the AllMomDoes team. And listener, I want to hear from you too. I would love for you to go to wherever you get your podcasts from and leave a five-star rating and review. And you might just get to hear your review on the next AllMomDoes podcast.