The holiday season arrives all at once. October begins the marathon of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it is genuinely surprising how close together they are – one straight after another, with no time to prepare for each. Which is exactly why people start months ahead.
Start in summer
It sounds absurd and it is the single most useful piece of advice here.
Handmade decorations and gifts take time that does not exist in December. Making them in July or August, when there is nothing else competing, turns a stressful obligation into something enjoyable.
It also spreads the cost, which matters when you are making for a lot of people.
Plan across all three
Because the holidays run together, planning them together saves a great deal.
Make a list of who needs what and when. Then look for overlaps – the same basic construction in different colours covers a startling amount of ground. A batch of decorated jars becomes Halloween lanterns in orange and black, harvest containers in autumn colours, and Christmas gifts in red and gold.
Buy materials in bulk across the whole season rather than three times.
Halloween
The most forgiving of the three, because rough edges read as character. Crocheted ghosts and pumpkins, paper bats, decorated jars for candles.
Things that can be reused annually are worth the effort. Store them flat and labelled.
Thanksgiving and autumn
A quieter palette and a focus on the table. Centrepieces, napkin rings, place settings.
Natural materials work particularly well here and cost nothing – leaves, seed heads, small gourds, raffia.
Christmas
The big one, and where starting early pays off most.
Split it into decorations and gifts and treat them separately. Decorations can be made any time and stored. Gifts need to be finished by a date, so start with the ones that take longest – a knitted or crocheted item for an adult is a months-long project, not a December one.
Being realistic
The most common mistake is planning to handmake everything. It is a lot of work, and a rushed handmade gift is worse than a bought one.
Choose the people for whom it will mean the most and make properly for them. Buy for the rest without guilt.
Involve people
Making decorations together is a better use of a winter afternoon than most things, and children take it seriously in a way they do not with ordinary craft activities.
The decorations that come out year after year, made by someone who was six at the time, end up being the ones everybody looks for.
