Kristen Bell Is Teaching Her Kids To ‘Not Partake’ In The Stress Of The Holidays And She May Be Onto Something

Kristen Bell wants to teach her kids to have a stress-free Christmas, and we should all take a lesson from her.

The holiday season is stressful, man. We hurry and scurry around, trying to find the perfect gifts, decorating our houses like a winter wonderland, baking all the — very necessary — Christmas cookies, traveling, and — not to mention, if you have kids, trying to get them to the finish line that is winter break.

Kristen wants to have a more laid back approach to Christmastime, and I absolutely love it.

Now, that’s not to say that Kristen doesn’t partake in a few holiday traditions — wearing matchy-matchy family pajamas, singing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs, and watching — the very necessary — National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

But, she just does it very stress free — and she wants her kids to do the same.

We are attempting to model the behavior for our kids to not get too uppity or too intent on things being perfect.

Kristen Bell

Let me tell you — my 10-year-old son is already feeling VERY entitled this holiday season — and I’ve been trying to show him that it’s not all about how many gifts you have under the tree. It’s not about knowing — in the core of your being — that you are going to get that Nintendo Switch that you’ve been asking for all.year.long.

My sister calls me every single day, and is totally stressed about finding the PERFECT gift for absolutely everyone on her Christmas list.

My daughter is totally stressed about the fact that we don’t yet have our Christmas tree up.

They need to take a lesson from Kristen, and JUST CHILL!! Slow down and enjoy it.

‘We want the whole day to be lazy’ — Kristen Bell

Kristen says that she just wants to take the holidays easy. She wants to dress up for the big day, and take a walk together as a family — but make it as lazy as possible.

We’ll do that in our holiday pajamas and look like crazy people walking through the neighborhood and we just don’t care.

Kristen Bell

She’s all about getting the family — including the dog — matching Christmas jammies — a tradition she started before the kids even came into the picture.

I would buy matching sets for Dax, and I and our dogs. He very peacefully went along with it, which I’m very grateful for.

Kristen Bell

Also, instead of just ripping into gifts (the way we all do), the family adopts an approach to gift-opening that Dax brings along from his childhood.

The youngest person gets to open the first gift, and then they each open a gift in order of age.

Basically grandma’s definitely asleep at the end. The older you are, chances are you have more patience. So it works for us.

Kristen Bell

Now, granted, Kristen has an endorsement deal with Target’s delivery brand Shipt, but she says that getting things shipped and delivered really helps the stress-free approach to the holidays.

I mean, she isn’t wrong.

Around the holidays, the only thing that I will not partake in is the stress of it all. And that’s been a lesson I’ve learned late in life. I attempted to have my first few Christmases when I hosted, or when we first had kids, to be genuinely from the ground up ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ I was like, ‘I’ll grow the carrots we’ll eat on Christmas night!’ And it drove me crazy! So over the last five years, I’ve made a real commitment to start delegating, and I’ve used a lot of delivery services because that is a real part of delegating when you’re in a family — you have to have things delivered.

Kristen Bell

So here’s to a peaceful, stress free, and absolutely lovely Christmas. Take it from Kristen Bell, simple and slow is definitely the way to go!