It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and become overwhelmed and stressed. Generally when those things happen it’s easy to let things fall by the wayside, and sometimes that includes your marriage. Making time for your marriage during the holiday season can be difficult with school performances, and finals and company parties etc, but it is so important to make the time and really connect.
My husband and I like to do something we call the 12 Dates of Christmas and really the dates can be up to you. You could do more, or less. They can be grand or simple. They can involve going out or they can be as simple as Netflix and Chill. This year we started off simple as we both had school to wrap up but now that we are both done we have some exciting things to come.
It’s just a time to be intentional with one another and to make sure that throughout this busy holiday season we make our marriage a priority.
These are our 12 Dates Of Christmas
1) Christmas Movie Date. Get the season started off on the right foot by watching one of your favorite movie to get you in the Christmas Spirit. Some of our faves (well let’s be honest, they are really mine) are The Holiday, The Family Stone, All I Want For Christmas, Elf, Christmas Vacation and Home Alone.
2) Cook A New Meal Together. Generally I do most of the cooking in our relationship and my sweet hubby gets clean up duty. Every once in awhile though we try to take the time to prepare a meal together. We usually like to test out something new. Obviously Pinterest can lead to some tasty inspiration. We used a Holiday Cookbook. Full disclosure….we totally ruined our dinner and it was not edible and so the husband made a Taco Bell run and we had some laughs at our epic kitchen fail.
3) Make a Christmas Ornament for the tree. This one was a fun one and we got to have something to add to our tree that we can enjoy for years to come. We got simple plain ball ornaments and painted them together. I may have taken it more seriously than the husband, but he gave it a good effort.
4) Go Christmas Shopping. Let’s face it, fighting the madness and Holiday rush is not a fun task. Doing it together as a team is totally the way to go. Taking time together to pick out gifts for your kids and loved ones. Grabbing some Starbucks and getting excited over the excitement that will come when the gifts are opened together can be super rewarding and fun.
5) Massages. Now you could go to a spa and get a couples massage, but that just wasn’t in our budget. So we decided to up the romance factor and give each other massages. If you don’t live in Houston where mother nature thinks winter is around 80 degrees, then you could take it a step further and do massages by the fire. Hot, Hot, HOT!
6) Give Back. Pick an organization or charity and together as a couple find a way to give back. Weather it is to feed the homeless, or help wrap gifts for orphans, find a way to serve together while serving others.
7) Christmas Lights. Load up in the car and drive through the local neighborhoods looking at the Christmas Lights. We drove threw Starbucks and picked up our fave holiday drinks. Cranked up the A/C because hello Houston weather blows…and turned on some Christmas tunes and enjoyed a drive around town. Houses that set their lights to music always blow my mind. And we found the biggest inflatable Santa I have ever seen.
8) Dollar Store Challenge. Head out to the Dollar Store and separate. Setting a price point to stick to ahead of time ($10 goes a long way in a Dollar Store) and pick out stocking stuffers for each other. Practical or silly, it’s all in fun. Then go home and put them together in a stocking and enjoy the evening laughing and opening your stockings.
9) Sleepover. I know when you are married every night is a sleepover, but you can kick it up a notch for date night and create a pillow fort in front of the TV or one better, in front of the tree. Fall asleep together underneath the twinkling lights
10) Take Holiday Pictures. If you are like us, then the last time you had a photo taken of just the two of you, it was possibly at your wedding. You can either 1) Hire a photographer and pay someone to take some awesome photos of you or 2) Set up your tripod and pretend to know what you are doing and just accept the madness that will occur.
11) Ice Skating. There aren’t as many options in Texas, but we do have some this time of year. Bundle up and hit the ice. Ice Skating for me is just letting my husband drag me around the rink as I cling to him desperately not trying to fall for the millionth time.
12) Night On The Town. Dress up in fancy clothes and hit the town for a festive show. Weather it be The Nutcracker or a Symphony, find something that is a little extra special and make a fancy evening out of it. Fancy evenings are few and far between in our house, so it’s nice to get dressed up every once in awhile and really make the most of an evening on the town. If the arts aren’t your thing you could still get dressed up and have drinks at a fancy restaurant in town.
Whatever you do, weather 12 dates or 25…just remember to make time for one another and to have fun with it all. The greatest of all gifts, is the gift of Love. Make sure you share that with your spouse this Christmas season.
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