How Will You Simplify Your Holiday? New Dream wants to know how you will focus on more of what matters this holiday, not just more stuff!  We are updating our “Simplify the Holidays” booklet in time for this season, and we want to include your best ideas or brightest holiday memories! Email your submissions to holidays@newdream.org.

If you were asked to describe the ideal holiday season, what would you say?

Perhaps you would include the company of loved ones, good food, fun and relaxation… maybe an inch or two of snow. Aiming higher in our holiday daydreams, we might even envision a feeling of tranquility and peace blanketing our homes, our community, the wide world.

Whatever you imagined, contrast it now with the typical mid-December scene at the mall, where countless holiday shoppers weave between traffic, oscillating between oppressed weariness and panic, as they search for non-existent parking spaces and that perfect gift that says “I had no earthly idea what to get you, but chose this particular item because, um, it is shiny and appears to cost what I could reasonably be expected to spend.”

Not so lofty, is it? It seems simple, but the holidays, meant to be a time of peace, reflection, and celebration, too often exhaust rather than uplift us. If you sometimes feel trapped by the shopping, spending, crass displays, and frenzied preparations, you aren’t alone. Our national surveys consistently show that Americans feel put upon by the commercialization of the season and want more of what matters… not just more stuff.