Whatever Is Excellent with Leanne Tuggle
Encouragement and Inspiration for women choosing to rise above the “just survive” mentality and instead set their mind on thriving in all that they say and do. The ultimate goal is to equip you to pursue whatever is excellent in the midst of your ordinary life and in all that you say and do.
Whatever Is Excellent with Leanne Tuggle
50: Creating a Stress-Free Christmas
Imagine waking up on December 1st feeling peaceful instead of panicked. The soft twinkling lights illuminate your living room as you enjoy a quiet moment before the day begins. Your gifts are purchased, your calendar has breathing room, and you feel genuinely excited about the season ahead.
This peaceful December morning isn't a fantasy—it's entirely possible when you start preparing for Christmas now, with intention and prayer. The irony of Christmas is striking: angels announced "peace on earth," yet for many adults (especially women), it's become the most stressful season of the year. Between overcommitted schedules, financial strain, social expectations, and family dynamics, we often find ourselves exhausted rather than joyful.
What would happen if you approached the holidays differently this year? Start by prayerfully determining what matters most to your family. For some, it might be Advent readings and meaningful conversations about Christ's birth. For others, it might involve baking cookies with neighbors or sending thoughtful cards to loved ones. Once you've identified your priorities, protect your calendar fiercely—decide which events deserve your presence and which ones you'll politely decline. Create a realistic budget for gifts and festivities, then challenge yourself to complete all shopping by December 1st.
The most transformative change happens when we shift from a performance mindset to one of presence. Children rarely remember elaborate decorations or perfect table settings—they remember simple traditions and time spent together. As Psalm 46 reminds us, sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is "be still and know that I am God." This Christmas, will you join me in creating space for that stillness amidst the season?
Ready to transform your holiday experience? Begin your Christmas preparations today and discover the peace that comes from intentional planning and Christ-centered priorities.
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With just under three months until Christmas, I thought that now might be a great time to start discussing the holidays, so that you can step into this traditionally very busy season feeling calm and peace-filled. You want to embrace the holidays with excellence and you want to feel relaxed and refreshed instead of frantic and overwhelmed, and you know that preparation will help you with that. So picture this. I can see you now. The house is quiet. As you creep down the stairs, the soft twinkling lights of the Christmas tree provide just the right amount of coziness for this otherwise dreary morning. Turning into the kitchen, you pass your fully stocked pantry and you silently offer up a prayer of gratitude for God's provision and some wise budgeting. Perhaps later this afternoon you can begin the cookie baking with your children. As your coffee brews, you notice the stack of Christmas cards on the counter, and so you place the cards by the front door so that you don't forget to put them in the mailbox today. On your way back to the kitchen, you see the advent wreath that your children made over the weekend, and you smile thinking about how excited they will be to light those candles and hear the story of Jesus' birth throughout the next few weeks With a hot cup of coffee in hand. You grab a blanket from the nearby basket and locate your own Advent devotional and your Bible. Breathing deeply, you take your sip of coffee and feel peace wash over you. It is in this moment that you know this holiday season will be different. You are prepared for the busy days to come and you feel ready to embrace the season with joy and love. You remember the decision that you made back in September to let this be the year you make room for the Savior in your holiday plans, and now you get to harvest the reward of that decision. That's the picture that you want to see, isn't it?
Leanne:The month of December is notoriously crazy. It is full of parties and festivals and choir concerts and tree lighting ceremonies, and then there are the gifts to buy, the stockings, to stuff the meals, to prepare the cookies, to bake the advent calendar, to keep up with the travel plans, to finalize, and it's honestly no wonder that adults, particularly women, feel the most stressed and overwhelmed around the holidays. It is interesting to me that when the angels suddenly appeared to the shepherds, luke 2.14 says and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God, and saying of heavenly hosts praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest and, on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased. The angels were announcing peace for this season, not stress and overwhelm. So what if there was a better way to approach this season? What if you decided to embrace excellence and begin preparing for Christmas now? What if you had a clear vision for what you would like the holidays to be and could follow through with peace and calm? Home, friend, there is a way to wake up on December 1st knowing that all of the details are taken care of and you get to simply rest and enjoy the season. In fact, jesus says in Matthew 11, 28, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So let's do that. Let's lay down the pressure and burdens of this Christmas season, let's lay them at the feet of Jesus and choose instead to delight in Him. If this sounds like exactly what you need right now, then I want to invite you to grab a pen and maybe a piece of paper and get ready to take some notes, because this year is going to be different. You are going to be different.
Leanne:The most common sources of holiday stress fall into four main categories Overcommitted schedules, financial concerns, social expectations and pressures, and family dynamics. For the purpose of this episode today, I'm going to focus on those first three categories. I do plan to address the family dynamics category in a future episode coming soon, but it needs its own whole episode, so more on that topic later. For now, let's consider these other three categories and in order to really get into it, I want you to take a minute. You have your piece of paper in front of you and I want to give you a couple of questions to prayerfully consider. If you are someone who likes to keep a journal, maybe this would be a good journal prompt for you. Are someone who likes to keep a journal, maybe this would be a good journal prompt for you.
Leanne:When it comes to the holidays, particularly Christmas, ask the Lord what he wants your family to focus on this year, start with prayer, what traditions and events truly bring life and joy to you and your family, and what things can you let go of this year. I want you to think about those questions, take time to write down some answers and some thoughts, decide your priorities for the holiday season prayerfully and hopefully with your spouse, by starting here, you are already headed in a more peace-filled direction. Otherwise, the noise and colors and general chaos of the season will overwhelm you. But with God, it will be much easier to make decisions centered around what matters most. Centered around what matters most. So, for example, the things that matter most for our family are intentionally celebrating the Advent season through God's word, baking cookies to share with our neighbors. That's a way that we can involve our community. We like to mail encouraging Christmas cards to all of our family and friends, both near and far, enjoying a couple of festive events that bring delight, and connecting together as a family through the giving and receiving of thoughtful gifts. These are the things that we feel led to prioritize for this season.
Leanne:Once you know what to prioritize, you can begin to simplify and plan ahead. So it starts with prayer and it starts with thinking about what is best for you and your family in this season, knowing that you cannot do it all. So prioritize now. If I have said this once, then I have probably said it a thousand times Protect your calendar. Those overcommitted schedules don't happen on their own. You allow them to happen when you forget to leave margin for rest. So right now, before you feel tempted to do all the things. Plan which festive events you will participate in and which ones you will politely decline.
Leanne:Now, I know you may not know the exact date of all of these events. If you like to attend events that are in your own town, a lot of those events are already posted, like the days. But if there are events that your family loves to participate in and you don't know which day they will land on yet, that's okay. Prioritize which events are most important to you right now and if you don't know those exact details, instead block off days that will be for rest in your calendar. So focus on maybe a whole weekend where you don't do anything, no outside events. Then guard those days fiercely, like for our family. I know that there will be a parade in our town. I don't know what day it is yet, I actually haven't looked it up but I know that there is a parade. And I know that there will be a choir concert, that my children will be in a winter concert, and I also know that my husband's command will have a holiday party. I don't know what day that is yet, but I know that those are three things that our family would like to participate in that bring us joy and that we love every holiday season. So those events I am going to prioritize. Everything else is going to go on like a little wait list of sorts and we will only participate in those events if we feel up to it. So I'm prioritizing those three things.
Leanne:Saving the rest of the month for lots of rest and room for margin and other events can be a maybe One of the biggest stressors, I think, of the holiday season is the financial strain that is often a result of overspending on gifts and also all of those festivities and activities. They can add up, especially if you're looking at going to zoo lights and going to this carnival and going to that. All of that is expensive and it can add up if you haven't budgeted for those things. So you can plan ahead now by creating your budget today and then you need to stick to it. And that might be the hardest part. You can ask your spouse to hold you accountable if necessary and yes, I know that that sounds scary, it is scary, I know from experience. And yet it makes a huge difference if you can submit the different gift ideas or things that you want to buy to your spouse and then together decide if it makes sense and then together decide if it makes sense, stick to that budget.
Leanne:I also recommend shopping for gifts ahead of time. This can be huge in saving time as well as money, and I have to admit that the idea of shopping early for gifts I did come by that. Honestly, I have memories of my mom collecting stocking stuffers in like July. There was this bin up in her closet and I would see her like tucking little things in it and I was like what is that? And then I would find out later in my stocking. So clearly, shopping early for gifts was modeled for me at a young age, but it wasn't until living overseas that I truly understood the benefits of buying gifts early.
Leanne:When we moved to Germany, I learned that all of our Christmas gifts needed to be postmarked by Halloween in order to ensure arrival to our loved ones back stateside. So by following this guideline, all of my gifts were purchased, wrapped and mailed before Halloween and I discovered how refreshing it was to be done with this major holiday task before even November. And because I loved how great that felt, I've been following that rhythm ever since. In fact, this is kind of funny, but you people always ask me like but what if you saw something in the Black Friday sales or something like that? You know what I would do I would buy them for the next year. I know that's a little bit extreme. You don't have to do that, but this concept of having all of your gifts purchased ahead of time really stuck with me because it relieved so much stress.
Leanne:So, practically speaking, you can do this too. You simply make a list of the different people who you would like to buy gifts for and then, next to each name, put your list of ideas and again double check that those gift ideas fit in your budget and then follow through. Make a goal to have all of the gift portion of your holiday season finished by December 1st Right now. That's my challenge to you. I want you to try it this year and just see if it doesn't help tremendously for you. Make a goal to have all of your Christmas shopping done by December 1st, and if you do follow through with that and if on December 1st, all of your Christmas shopping is done, I want you to send me a message on Instagram and I'm going to celebrate with you. Okay, I promise that this is very doable, but you do have to commit to your budget and to your list.
Leanne:Similarly, right now, we all know that groceries are very expensive, so decide ahead of time what cookies or baking things that you want to do for the season. What meals will you be hosting? Be reasonable in what you have the time and energy for and don't be afraid to ask for help. Perhaps you can set up a cookie exchange with some friends. That way, you don't have to bake all of the different types of cookies. Or, if you are going to be hosting, share the load by inviting guests to bring specific dishes to the meal. Everyone always asks what can I bring, so give them some options. And lastly, when it comes to decorating for the season, consider what you already have and how you might be able to repurpose or freshen up those things.
Leanne:It's very, very tempting to run over to Hobby Lobby or HomeGoods and make your home look like all of the other homes that you see on Pinterest or all of our social media, and you end up buying things that you don't really need. You can create a beautifully festive and cozy home with just a few carefully selected items. Now, when it comes to holiday stressors, I am convinced that social expectations are the worst offender. Too often, as women especially, we measure our worth based on how we compare to everyone else. I don't know why we do that, but we still struggle with comparison, as I just mentioned before, wanting your home to look a certain way based on what you saw someone else's home look like. So not only do we have social expectations creating stress, but we put stress on ourselves with our own unmet expectations, and we feel that pressure to do it all and make it magical too, and so you can blame social media for this added pressure.
Leanne:But a better use of your time is to shift from a performance mindset to one of presence. Focus less on everything being magical and just right and instead be intentional with creating space for relationships and Christ-centered conversations. For example, in our family we love the daily Advent devotionals and lighting candles to symbolize different parts of the Christmas story. Our favorite carols and holiday music are playing nonstop in our house all throughout the month of December while we bake cookies together and we read our favorite Christmas stories and evening walks. To see all of the pretty lights forces us to slow down and really savor the sweetness of the season. Each of these cherished Christmas traditions are simple and inexpensive and lend more towards time spent together than striving to make everything perfectly magical.
Leanne:I asked my kids what were their favorite parts of Christmas, like, what were their favorite traditions, and these are the things they listed. They didn't mention all of the festivals. They didn't mention all of the other events. Really, none of the things were super expensive that they mentioned, and it just reminded me that what they really want is time spent with their family. So focus on the things that matter most to your family. Ask your children what are their favorite parts of Christmas.
Leanne:A peace-filled Christmas season is found when we release control and surrender our own expectations to the Lord. Take a moment and picture a Christmas season where you feel refreshed instead of drained. When you align your priorities to God's plans for your family this season, when you protect your calendar and focus on presence over perfection, you can fully embrace a stress-free holiday season. To close this episode, I would like to read most of Psalm 46 to you. As you listen, consider how these verses remind us to slow down and truly know how mighty is our God and Savior. It is my prayer that, as you get into the preparations for this holiday season, that you come back to this psalm, often for peace and reassurance. Often for peace and reassurance.
Leanne:Psalm 46, 1-10. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea. Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling, there is a river whose streams make glad. The city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High God, is in the midst of her. She will not be moved. God will help her. When morning dawns the nations rage, the kingdoms totter, he utters His voice. The earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us. The Be still and know that I am God.