Christmas in July: Why Right Now Is the Best Time to Start

It is July, it is approximately 95 degrees outside, Pisa, Paris and Patches have decided the brick floor is their new bed, and I am thinking about Christmas.

I know.

Before you close the tab, hear me out.

I have been blogging for over fifteen years, which means I have lived inside the holidays longer than most people realize. The cookies and desserts you will see in December? Some of them were baked and photographed last month. My Christmas tree goes up every October so the post is written, photographed, and ready before the season arrives. This is not a sacrifice. I love it. I love Christmas the way some people love a sport, completely, a little unreasonably, year-round. But it has also taught me something I want to share with you today: the women who enjoy the holidays most are the ones who started long before anyone else thought to.

My grandmother knew this. Her cookie closet held over forty kinds, baked in batches across the weeks before Christmas, stored in decorative tins, brought out on platters on Christmas Eve before Midnight Mass. Forty. She did not accomplish that in the last two weeks of December. She started early, she worked steadily, and by the time Christmas arrived she had created something extraordinary. Not just the cookies. The abundance of them. The feeling that Christmas had been prepared for with love and intention.

That is what I grew up understanding Christmas to be. And that is exactly how I still do it, starting earlier than anyone thinks is reasonable, and never once regretting it. This year why not join me?

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Start With the Tree

For the past two years I have been gifted a tree from King of Christmas.. The first year I chose the King Noble Fir for the dining room. To me it is the quintessential English country tree, the kind that looks as though it has stood in that corner for a hundred years. Last year it was the King Flocked Noble Fir, and I made all of the marble ornaments for it by hand.

This year I am getting another Noble Fir, this one for the Indigo Room. The ornaments are already underway.

Which brings me to what I think is the best idea in this entire post. If you have grandchildren or children at home, make ornaments with them this summer. Not in December when the glue gun is competing with the cookie exchange and the school concert and everyone is three days behind on sleep. Do it now. On one of those August afternoons when it is too hot to go to the pool, when everyone has already turned approximately the color of a lobster and the pavement is not to be trusted with bare feet. Spread out on the kitchen table, make something together, tuck it away. Come December, those ornaments will mean more than anything you could have ordered online.

And if you have been thinking about a new tree, summer is the time to decide. You want it before the October rush, and more than that, you want time to fall in love with it before the pressure of the season arrives. By the way all of the King of Christmas trees are currently on sale.

The Gifts

I am going to tell you how gift-giving actually works in my family, because I never see anyone write about this honestly. Most of the people on my list, the grandchildren, the kids, the parents, prefer gift cards. It is practical, they get exactly what they want, and although it makes me a little sad I have made my peace with it.

What I still love is finding one or two genuinely special things for the people I love. One or two, not many. The kind of gift that shows you were paying attention in September when they mentioned something in passing. That kind of gift does not happen in December. In December you are surviving. In July you are living, and paying attention, and quietly filing things away.

And if you put up food, jams, chutneys, pickles, hot fudge, cordials, anything from the garden, you already have gifts. Set a few jars aside now. They are some of the most appreciated things I have ever given anyone and they are perfect in a gift basket.

The Cards (A Confession)

Here is something I cannot explain about myself. I send cards all year long. Thinking of you cards, congratulations cards, cards for no reason at all. Under the ottoman in the Indigo Room I keep a vintage lap desk. It is where I write in the morning, journals and favorite pens and a cup of something hot, and it is stocked at all times with stamps and cards, ready to go. The ritual of it is one of my favorite things.

And then December arrives and I sit down with my address book and a stack of Christmas cards and I feel completely overwhelmed. Every year. The lap desk is right there. The stamps are right there. I cannot explain it, and I have stopped trying.

What I can tell you is that the problem is not the supplies. It is the scale of it, everyone at once, the list, the weight of it all landing together in the busiest month of the year. So this is what I am doing differently. In July I am addressing the envelopes. All of them. Pulling out the address book, writing out every name, stacking them up and putting them away. Then in October, when I am ready, I write two or three cards a day, tuck them into their already-addressed envelopes, and by the time December arrives the whole thing is done. The lap desk is free for the journals and birthday cards. I am not behind before I have even started.

We will see if I actually do it. But I like this plan considerably better than the old one.

The Baking

On the blog I share new recipes every year because that is the nature of the work. For my family I make the same cookies every single year. My grandmother’s cookies. The ones that lived in the cookie closet, over forty kinds, baked over weeks, stored in decorative tins, brought out on Christmas Eve before Midnight Mass.

I am not suggesting you bake forty kinds of cookies. But I am suggesting you decide now which ones you will make, and write down what you need. The Christmas Traditions post has the full cookie closet story if you want it.

And while we are on the subject, let me tell you the thing, you do not have to bake the cookies in July. But you can start planning now and then in September or October, make four or five doughs and get them into the freezer. Then when you are ready to bake, you pull them all out, bake everything in one long satisfying day, and you are done. Ready for the cookie exchange. Ready for the party. Ready.

One More Thing

Here is what I want you to understand, and I say this as someone who has watched it happen year after year: time flies. One minute it is October and you are standing in front of a beautifully decorated tree feeling on top of things. What feels like five seconds later it is Thanksgiving. Then the holiday concerts, the parties, the work events, and somewhere in between all of that we are supposed to create the most magical holiday of the year, leaving absolutely no time to actually enjoy any of it.

The answer is not to do more in December. The answer is to do more now, when there is still time and space and quiet enough to think. Make a few tentative plans. In October, when everyone else is focused on Halloween, you will already be ahead. By December 1st you want a calendar full of things you are looking forward to, not a list of things you still have to do.

A couple of years ago I wrote 15 Easy and Simple Ways to Get Ready for Christmas, and it somehow became the post that people flock to when they are ready to get serious about the holidays. People find it in October, which is when it was written to be found. Re-reading it this week I realized: nearly everything on that list works better in July. The budget planning. The baking preparation. The decorations. The family photos.

All of it. Better now.

The women who came before us understood something we keep forgetting: the only way to actually enjoy the season is to be ready before it arrives. My grandmother knew it. Her mother knew it before her.

Start now. Make the ornaments. Address the envelopes. Set one jar of jam aside. Pull out your cookie recipes and start planning. Do one small thing today that your December self will receive like a gift.

December you will be grateful. July you deserves the credit.

Are you a Christmas in July person, or does the very idea make you want to close the laptop and go sit by the pool? Tell me in the comments. I am always looking for new ideas, and I am genuinely curious whether your household starts early or runs straight into the wall in December like a perfectly reasonable person.

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You Might Also Enjoy:

15 Easy and Simple Ways to Get Ready for Christmas

The Best Christmas Traditions for Making Special Family Memories

My King of Christmas Noble Fir Tree Review

My King of Christmas Flocked Artificial Christmas Tree

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