Advance Planning Keeps The Christmas Beat Merry!

 

Heading out for New Year’s Eve? Taking down your holiday decorations? Planning to wrap up your holiday celebrations soon?

While winding up the 2014 holiday season, take time for a little reflection of your recent holiday experiences. Then, combining the lessons learned with a bit of forwarding thinking can help make your 2015 Christmas a little merrier ... or at least a bit less stressful. Here are some tips and suggestions of steps to take now to better prepare for next Christmas.

Organize and de-clutter your decorations...

As you take down your holiday decorations, take time to thoroughly inspect them. Toss out anything that isn’t working or that has seen better days. Make a note of what you have to replace. Then, repack and organize your decorations to make unpacking next year easier. Be sure to label boxes.

Take advantage of after-Christmas sales ...

If you discarded worn-out decorations, be sure to check the after Christmas sales for any deals to help you replace them. Also, take advantage of the deep discounts on wrapping paper and other Christmas supplies that year-end sales offer.  Just don’t over do it and end up with a wrapping paper hoard!

Review and take notes ...

Do you have trouble remembering from one year to the next how much you made or bought or ordered of something? Make a note or two of the important things you need to remember and put them some where you can find them ... perhaps a notebook stored with your Christmas decorations or in the “notes” of your planner.  The reference will come in handy when trying to remember whether you gave the school bus driver a gift or how many plates of Christmas cookies you need to bake. Need another example of how making such notes can reduce stress? Our extended family often orders specialty pizzas for our after-Christmas get together and gift exchange. Rather than struggle to remember what we ordered and what everyone actually ate next time around, I noted what we ordered, what was most popular and what we had left over.

Note anything you need to replace next year but couldn’t find in this year’s after-holiday sales. 

Make a list of gifts that were really well received. Or, if you learned some things about gift preferences during this year’s exchanges, note those for next year, too.

Do a holiday review .....

What went really well this Christmas? What didn’t really work at all? What are the things that caused the most stress or arguments?  What things were most important to your family?  Gather all of your family members together and find out what they’d love to do again next year and what they’d be okay skipping in the future. This may help you reduce the stress of over committing during the busy holidays.

Consider a Christmas planner....

About the recommendation for notes and finding them later that I mentioned earlier? Put all of your notes in a single notebook or binder.  You could store your new “Christmas Planner” with your decorations, but for year-round access, consider putting this planner in your desk or where you keep your address book or bills or such.

Plan ahead ...

Think of things you can do a little along and try to take care of those things once a month throughout the year. For example, mark one day each month in your new yearly planner to make notes for your holiday letter or to sort some of your photos that you might want for a Christmas card. 

Start saving now....

Help take a bite out of the financial sting of Christmas shopping by planning ahead. Consider opening a Christmas savings account if your financial institution offers those.  Total what you spent this year and come up with a plan to save at least that much. Financial guru Dave Ramsey recommends calculating this year’s spending total and then dividing that total by the number 10. Then, put that smaller figure aside every month from January through October (10 months of smaller payments) so you are ready to Christmas shop late next fall.

Winning strides start in the heart

It’s a game of superlatives:  The longest race ... the deepest dirt ... the biggest odds ... the fastest time ... the most impressive pedigree. 

It’s a game of numbers:  Of the approximately 26,000 possible contestants born annually to do this, only 20 of them in any given year will even receive the chance to try. 

Over all of the years and from among all of those eligible, only 11 others have actually done it. Since 1978, 12 others have tried only to fail in their third and final attempt. 

Thirty-six years. That’s two and half centuries in dog years. In the horse world, it’s a lifetime. In fact, 36 years is two or three lifetimes in the horse world.

Thirty-six years. That’s how long it’s been since we’ve rejoiced over a Triple Crown winner in horse racing. That’s a couple of lifetimes full of anticipation. That’s a couple of lifetimes in which an entire industry has begun to fade ... in which the fantasy and appeal of the sport of kings has dimmed.

However, in a world where winners are determined by fractions of a second, five weeks seems to be all the time we need to simply believe again.

Five weeks.  That’s how long it’s been since hope was rekindled. Five weeks since California Chrome, a horse whose backstory defies all the odds, began doing what no horse has done in decades. 

He’s made the nation pay attention. He’s made us want to believe.

Sure. There have been 12 others that have given horse racing fans pause in the last 36 years. But, few – if any - have had a story worthy of a made-for-TV movie. None have given rise to rap videos by school kids. None have inspired us with the one thing this unlikely hero actually seems to have going for him...

His heart. A tremendous, tremendous heart. And the ability to run on nothing but that heart.

California Chrome’s heart doesn’t know any of the following:

.... That winning the Triple Crown is an uber long shot even with the best of pedigrees and utmost planning. A shot most would have said this horse never had.

... That his mom was considered unspectacular at best and a dumbass investment of $8,000 at worst.

... That his dad is an unknown in which few have put much stock.

.... That his owners are neither sheiks nor billionaires and were considered stupid for taking the chance.

.... That he hails from a state not known for producing big-name stakes winners.

.... That his trainer isn’t an industry golden boy but rather is an unassuming man, long in the tooth, whose last real Derby experience was nearly 60 years ago as an exercise rider.

.... That his jockey has a dismal record at Belmont.

.... That history says the odds simply are not in his favor.

California Chrome doesn’t know any of that.  None of it is in his heart.

He doesn’t know that what he’s being asked to do is akin to catching lightning in a bottle.  Some might say he doesn’t know that an entire nation will be pulling for him to do just that ... capture that lightning.  Not me.  I say that a horse running on that much heart absolutely will feel what is in the nation’s heart.

Will that be enough?

Only time will tell. 

But I think that, if we all believe, the time just might be now. The horse just might be California Chrome.

And whose heart won’t sing with the addition of a just little more chrome in their lives?