How I Learned to Love the Chaos of Christmas

By Carl A. Trapani, MA, MS, LPC, Chippewa Manor Campus Chaplain

Have you ever really tried to pull off the perfect Christmas? I mean the Hallmark Channel, Martha Stewart, Style Magazine quality kind! For years, my wife and I would plan weeks in advance to try to make this happen  On the last warm day in November, I would spend a few hours untangling the huge balls of Christmas lights I had hastily packed away in January. Then I took them outside and began to hang them all over the house and yard. Each year I tried to do more than I had done the year before. Then as dusk fell, I had everyone come outside to watch as I switched on the lights.  The darkness vanished, and my family oohed and aahed at my decorating skills. I stood there drinking in their praises with pride, and noticing how much brighter our yard was than anyone else’s in our neighborhood.  Job one – well done. 

Later, I helped decorate the tree, and other parts of the house that my wife couldn’t reach or needed help with.  She was the master tree and house interior decorator, and each year tried to outdo what she had done the year before. Somehow every year she was able to pull this off.  We spared no expense or effort to make each Christmas perfect.  It was our goal to be able to stand in front of the Christmas tree with a hot cocoa in hand, gazing at the twinkling lights, and be satisfied that this holiday season was perfect. My wife made sure our house and tree decorations were Martha Stewart-worthy, and all our holiday cookies were perfectly baked. Doughy or burnt cookies were tossed.  Only perfect cookies would grace our plates. Gifts were carefully selected, purchased and then wrapped in high quality wrapping paper and ribbon.  The corner of each package was folded in tight symmetrical perfection.  All our holiday traditions and rituals were carefully observed to ensure we had a perfect Christmas.  On Christmas Day we awoke early, dressed ourselves in something red and then gathered to open our gifts. Gift-opening lasted for several hours because we went around the room in order of age, all of us watching as each one opened their gifts in turn.  Perfect.

This went on for years. Our kids grew up knowing Christmas as a time of great effort to make it perfect.  Then one year it all changed. Christmas, the holiday we had idealized into a Hallmark-movie vision of glittering joy, started to unravel. It wasn’t because we weren’t doing enough—we were doing too much. The more we tried to nail the “perfect” holiday, the more everything seemed to fall apart.

It began one fateful November when a blizzard buried the mid-west in snow and sub-zero temperatures. There was no way I could put up outside lights or decorations.  To make up for this we decided to really outdo ourselves in decorating the inside of our home. After spending hours combing through various the tree lots, I proudly hauled in the most magnificent Christmas tree we had ever purchased. It was the perfect shade of green, with the fullest branches, the most even spacing, and it even smelled terrific. I set it up with care and then my wife noticed that the top half sagged to the left. Despite my best efforts to unsag it, I finally wired the top to the wall pulling it to the right.  The lights, which I pretested before they were carefully hung on the branches, refused to work properly.  After the tree was decorated the tree lights took on a mind of their own. Half of them lit up and half of them flickered like a manic strobe light.  On-off, on-off, on for a while, then off for a while.  After spending more than an hour trying to “fix” the lights my wife and I stood back and simply laughed. We talked and decided to not let a saggy tree or crazy Christmas lights ruin our Christmas spirit. We vowed to embrace the imperfections and just enjoy the season. 

To help make up for the steadily increasing Christmas chaos, I had a grand idea: let’s bake a mountain of Christmas cookies to share with neighbors and friends. Let’s really share the Christmas spirit. My wife got out all the flour, sugar, and butter, and began to channel her inner Betty Crocker. An hour later, the kitchen looked like a disaster zone. The dough was a sticky mess that refused to form into any recognizable shape, and somehow, every batch of cookies turned into brittle, flat little disks or weird-colored rocks.  As we stood over a counter full of “cookies,” trying to figure out whether we had just created a new kind of Christmas punishment, our grandson Roman walked in, looked at the scene, and said, “These look like rocks. Can we eat them anyway?”

And in that moment, it clicked. Christmas isn’t about perfectly baked cookies—it’s about the joy of the process, the laughter shared, and the memories made. We ate those “rock cookies” and laughed ourselves silly.  Amid the baking disasters, the tree lights with a mind of their own, and the tree that resembled a crooked circus tent, I found myself seeking something deeper. Christmas wasn’t just about perfect moments, and it wasn’t about stressing over every tiny detail. It was about something bigger. It was about the spiritual heart of Christmas—the birth of Christ, the hope and joy that His arrival brought to the world. It wasn’t about the perfect presents, the best cookies, or a flawlessly decorated home. It was about love, peace, and goodwill toward others and the simple act of giving without expectation. The tree might be leaning, the cookies might taste like sawdust, and my holiday plans might be in tatters—but the message of Christmas still rings true: Love, hope, and joy, despite the messiness of life.

Now, when I look back at those “perfect” Christmases of years past, I see how much I missed in a quest for flawlessness. The real magic wasn’t in the perfection of a holiday that followed a set of rules and traditions—it was in the laughter, the love, and the lessons I learned along the way. Since then, I have embraced the chaos. Bad weather. Imperfect trees. Cookie failures. The shopping and wrapping. And, the beautiful, messy, real gift of spending time with those I love. Because, as I’ve learned, the true beauty of Christmas isn’t in the things we do or buy—it’s in the way we show up for each other, imperfections and all. It’s embracing the chaos and still laughing, sharing and loving. That, my friends, is where the real Christmas magic comes from. 

Carl Trapani, MA, MS, LPC serves as campus Chaplain at Chippewa Manor. He has more than 50 years of pastoral service and professional counseling experience. For more information please call (715) 723-4437 or email him at carl.trapani@chippewamanor.com.