Health and Wellness During the Holiday Season

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Health and Wellness During the Holiday Rush
by Susan Eskdale

Ladies and gentlemen, take your spot at the starting blocks, on your mark, get set, go! The race is on and you just dove face first into the massive ocean of tasks that must be done during this holiday season. You may ask why talk about health and wellness in the same breath as the holiday rush, once you read this article you may discover a connection between your wellness and the holiday rush

As another year draws to a close the holiday rush overwhelms us and it is important to understand how the holidays can impact on our health and wellness. This season can be cause for emotional, mental and physical stress that all can adversely impact upon health and wellness.

Do you remember Christmas as a child? Perhaps you awoke to find a mug of coco and an orange sitting on the table for you to eat prior to rushing to the side of the Christmas tree with its twinkling and sparkling lights. There was a feeling of excitement in the air and it was likely that you did not sleep well the night before due to the impending excitement of Christmas morning.

As a child the holidays may not have seemed very complicated, you got to stay home from school and have a class party where you traded gifts. You got to learn stories, poems and songs all about Christmas and you would go home to a house that was filled with the scent of shortbread cookies or Christmas puddings, mincemeat tarts and a wide array of wonderful foods.

In our house, our mother would make nuts and bolts, her own recipe. Even today I can remember exactly what the house smelled like as she baked the treats in the oven. It was a special treat and it was always wonderful to have the first taste of the batch fresh out of the oven.

Now as you think on the holidays as an adult, what things come to mind? I bet most of you will have some if not all of the following thoughts.

1. Yikes, Christmas is three weeks away and I haven’t accomplished a thing!

2. I need to find the perfect tree and I need to make decorations for the house this year.

3. The lights have not been put up yet and I haven’t decided where the tree will go or for that matter if it will be a live tree this year or a synthetic tree.

4. My Christmas baking isn’t close to being done and my family members need to take treats into the office and or their school.

5. I haven’t found the perfect gift for my husband and the toy that I wanted for my child is out of stock.

6. The kids are off school in a couple of weeks and they will need to be entertained, I need to have some festive fun planned for them.

7. I can’t remember where I put the gifts that I bought a couple of months ago, they were the perfect gifts too – now I’ll have to go out and buy something else.

8. Christmas cards, the cards for our friends and relatives overseas have still not been sent and I haven’t even written out the cards for friends and families domestically.

9. Now there was something I forgot about Christmas dinner, what vegetable wont the in-laws eat? Will I be able to get a bird big enough to feed everyone and yet small enough to fit in my roaster?

10. I’m sure that I forgot something and it is going to drive me crazy until I remember what it was.

You may well laugh at the ten samples of Christmas preparations listed above, but when you really start to think about the pace of the weeks leading up to Christmas and to the New Year you may see a troubling trend appear.

For a large portion of the population the holidays provide positive stressors, but what does this mean? A positive stressor is a change or event that is considered to be a pleasant experience or happening. Often these stressors are experienced as ‘excitement’ and help to make people feel that they are in the “Christmas spirit”.

An unknown number of individuals experience these positive stressors as negative stressors. The reaction becomes anxiety and fear making the holiday season difficult to navigate through. There are a number of factors that can contribute to the individual being overwhelmed by the stressors and each of these factors can have a strong impact on an individual’s health and wellness.

Disclaimer: Any information provided on treatment options is for your evaluation only and should be discussed with your physician. Information within articles are provided strictly for educational and research purposes and do not necessarily reflect the personal beliefs of the editor of MetaHealing.

Health and Wellness During the Holiday Rush by Susan Eskdale

Health and Wellness During the Holiday Rush
by Susan Eskdale