Twelve Sleeps ‘til Christmas: A Slow Advent Calendar for Anxious Times

Listen, we need to talk about December.

Somewhere between the first appearance of gazillions of Mariah Carey memes prepping us for the imminent arrival of her omnipresent vocal gymnastics and the panicky realisation that I’d yet again failed to ‘mindfully’ shop for presents throughout the year, the festive season stops being joyful and starts being a militant campaign of consumption, obligation, and special offers you didn’t ask for. (Looking at you, Black Friday.)

A typical advent calendar wants you to believe that happiness arrives nestled behind 24 tiny cardboard doors, each one revealing another miniature trinket. A tiny duck (cute, must admit). A tiny candle. A tiny existential crisis about why you spend your hard-earned cash on an overpriced box of tiny things, often made out of plastic.

So I have a counter-offer for frazzled festive-season nerves: a ‘Slow’ advent calendar, offering twelve prompts for the twelve sleeps leading up to Christmas day. No purchase required. No pressure to perform joy for the algorithm. Just small acts of slowing down, paying attention, and remembering that the season is about feeling good, not striving for perfection.

Think of this as permission to step off the hamster wheel. To choose presence over presents. (Yup, I went there.) And to do something that fills your soul instead of feeding the relentless machinery of ‘more’.

Ready? Let’s go.

Sleep 12: Make something from a prompt

Often, the best way to get out of our overthinking heads is to use our hands. Get inspired by the everyday objects around you, and use them to create something: whether you paint, stitch, craft, sculpt, write, or sing. You could even choose a tiny project for all 12 days, using them as gifts when you’re done.

Try these prompts for inspiration (Tip: write each prompt on a piece of paper and put them in a jam jar, pulling one out every day):

• Something from your garden: A flower. A leaf. A feather. That garden skink that’s been sunning itself on the same rock every afternoon like he owns the place.
• A keepsake: An heirloom that’s been gathering dust. Old love letters. Birthday cards from long ago. Pick one and make something new with it: collage it, paint it, write about it.
• A photograph you love: One that makes you feel something every time you see it.
• Pick a word, any word, and let it be your jumping-off point: cloud, flower, sunshine, teatime, glitter, siren song… Draw it. Write about it. Photograph it in an interesting way. Make a tiny sculpture. Press it into a journal.

There are no wrong ideas here, just the joy of making.

Sleep 11: Write a letter to someone who shaped you this year

Not an email, or a text with a hastily chosen emoji. Write a letter on beautiful stationery, using a favourite pen. And nope, nobody cares if you’re handwriting’s pretty. (Well, except for a certain teacher who washed her hands of me in first grade…)

Think about someone who changed something in or for you this year. Maybe they said exactly the right thing at the right moment. Maybe they just showed up, reliably, when everything else felt chaotic. Maybe they taught you something without meaning to.

Write to them. Tell them what they did. Be specific, be embarrassing – be the kind of earnest that makes you cringe a little because that’s how you know it’s real.

You don’t even have to send it, though you should. Imagine being the person who gets a handwritten letter in their mailbox between the bills and the junk mail. Imagine being the reason someone smiles on a random Tuesday. Be that for someone.

(P.S.: if the person you want to write to can no longer receive your letter, burn it, and believe that those sparks will reach them.)

Sleep 10: Dance to your favourite song

Right now. Do it! By yourself in the kitchen, bringing that Wooden Spoon Microphone energy. Gather your kids to join you, and laugh at their ‘wait, what?!’ expressions. Or slow dance with your partner in the living room like you’re in a romcom where life makes sense and nobody’s worried about interest rates.

The song choice matters less than the commitment. Could be Taylor Swift. Could be Florence and the Machine. Or it could be that banger from 2005 that you refuse to apologise for. (Fall Out Boy 4eva!) Just move and get the endorphins kicking. Remind your body that it’s not just a vessel for carrying anxiety and grocery bags. Shake something loose, and shake it off, too. The dishes can wait!

Sleep 9: Appreciate a cloud

Take a picnic blanket, find a patch of green, lie down and look up. Yes, at clouds: those slow-moving, shape-shifting miracle puffs freewheeling across the sky, completely indifferent to your worries. Watch them morph from dragons into teapots into pelicans, and let your brain do that lovely, spacious thing it does when you give it something beautiful and pointless to focus on.

If you want to go full nerd about it, Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s Cloud Appreciation Society (yes, it exists, and yes, it’s delightful) would be thrilled to have you. But honestly, you don’t need to be part of a club: you just need fifteen minutes and a willingness to remember that wonder is free.

Sleep 8: Plant something

Get your hands in soil. Actual dirt under your fingernails. There’s something deeply grounding – pun absolutely intended – about putting a living thing into earth and trusting it to do its thing. It’s an act of hope, and believing in a future where you’ll be around to harvest the basil or admire the blooms. A small way of taking back some control when the world makes you feel powerless. Besides, there’s increasing evidence that soil microbes are good for mental health. So really, you’re just following doctor’s orders. Prescription: dirt!

Sleep 7: Start your Garage Sale Trail cupboard

Yes, it’s practical, but hear me out. The festive season means stuff. So much stuff, arriving in your house like uninvited guests who overstay their welcome. And you, being a person with finite space and increasing awareness that ‘things are just things’, need an exit strategy.

So, designate a cupboard. A box. A corner. Whatever works. This is where things go when you realise you don’t need them, but they’re too good to bin. The dress that looked great in theory. The kitchen gadget you used once. The book you bought because you were a different person with different aspirations. Put them all in the cupboard, and by the time the Garage Sale Trail rolls around next year, you’ll have a whole collection ready to go. And someone else will be delighted to give them a home. Future you is already grateful!

Sleep 6: Watch your favourite festive movie

I’ve seen it a million times, and I’ll see it a million more: Die Hard is my ultimate festive season movie. And I can’t wait to set up the couch with our fluffiest blankets and bowls full of hot, fresh popcorn, salted and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. And then, we’ll top it off with Elf. And maybe some Love, Actually just because. It doesn’t really matter what you watch, as long as you love it, and love sharing it with others. The point isn’t really the movie, anyway: the point is permission to stop, to sit, to do something for absolutely no reason except that it feels good. You’re allowed to enjoy things. Just in case nobody’s told you that recently.

Sleep 5: Put your phone away for a whole day

I know. I know! But also… just imagine! A whole day where you’re not checking if that thing you posted got enough validation. Where you’re not scrolling through other people’s highlight reels while imagining you’re sitting in your own blooper reel. Where you’re not available for every single person who might need something from you.

Tell people in advance if you need to, or set up an auto-reply. Put the phone in a drawer. Then… do whatever you feel like. Go outside. Read a book. Have a long lunch uninterrupted by a notification. Notice the expressions on the faces of the people nearest and dearest to you. It’ll feel a bit weird at first, like you’re missing something important. But you’re not. Promise.

Sleep 4: Bake something

I am the proud inventor of the ‘banana doorstop’ – my take on banana bread, which has just always refused to rise to the occasion when I’m doing the baking. But hey, it might look ghastly and like it could keep a stiff breeze out – but it tastes delicious. (And you can easily dip it in your mug of tea like a rusk, if you’re that way inclined.)

Baking is alchemy. You combine a bunch of separate ingredients that look unpromising on their own, apply heat and hope, and somehow produce something that smells like childhood and tastes like more. It doesn’t have to be fancy: find an easy recipe for Christmas cookies, eat half the batter, burn the edges… Just make sure you top it off with sprinkles. Sprinkles make everything better.

Sleep 3: Stretch

Your body is tired. You’ve been carrying tension in your shoulders. Your neck hasn’t been in ‘neutral’ since March. So, stretch. On the floor. In bed. In the middle of the living room while the tea brews. Reach your arms up like you’re trying to touch the ceiling. Roll your shoulders back. Touch your toes (or at least try to get close!). Breathe into the tight spots, and make lots of weird groaning noises while you’re at it. Feel your spine remember what it’s like to have some space. You don’t have to be flexible, or even graceful. Just move in a way that reminds your body that you’re still paying attention to it.

Sleep 2: Mend something you’ve been meaning to fix

In Shinto, objects are often considered sacred because they’re believed to be imbued with a spiritual essence called ‘kami’. This holds true for both ‘natural’ objects like rocks, rivers and trees, and well-loved, oft-used household objects. (Like my favourite colander. I have one of those, yes, and it totally has a personality.) It follows, then, that there’s something almost holy about repair. About saying to an object: You’re still worthy. You still have purpose here.

Find that thing. You know the one. The mug with the broken handle you’ve been meaning to glue back. The shirt with the button hanging by a thread. Or the rabbit-shaped vase that’s been living in shoebox purgatory at the bottom of a cupboard like some kind of ceramic exile – until my partner found it and decided it was time to try his hand at kintsugi, the beautiful Japanese art of mending broken objects with gold-coloured glue. Is it perfect? No. Does it now sit on my desk like a small trophy to second chances? Absolutely. Every time I look at it, I feel absurdly delighted. It’s like getting a favourite thing back from the dead.

Sleep 1: Spend the day playing

Remember play? Not exercise-disguised-as-fun or ‘team-building activities’ that make you want to gnaw your own arm off. Not board games where someone takes it way too seriously and suddenly it’s about crushing your opponents’ hopes and dreams. (I will never, ever play Catan again.) Real, actual, no-purpose-except-joy play.

Somewhere between childhood and tax returns, most of us forgot how. We got busy. We got responsible. We started believing that play was frivolous, something to be earned after all the important work was done. Except the important work is never done, so we just… stopped.

But here’s the thing: play isn’t a reward for being a functional adult. It’s part of how you stay a functional adult. It’s how you remember what lightness feels like, and access the part of yourself that isn’t worried about deadlines or superannuation or whether you’re recycling correctly.

So today – the last day before the festive chaos descends – just play.

Go to the beach and jump waves. Time them badly. Get dumped. Laugh like you’re ten years old and someone just said ‘poo’. Play charades. The more dramatic, the better. Commit fully to being a helicopter or whatever impossible thing your team is desperately trying to guess. Have a spontaneous dance-off. (Maybe stretch right before in case of a grumpy hamstring!) Go to a playground and find out if the swings still feel like flying.

We shouldn’t have to schedule or ‘optimise’ joy. Sometimes joy is just throwing a frisbee until your arm hurts, or laughing so hard you can’t breathe. Somewhere along the way you’re going to remember you’re a human being made for joy, not a robot made to consume. And that’s a pretty good feeling.

The morning after

When you wake up on Christmas morning (or whatever version of the festive season you celebrate, or don’t), you’ll still be you. The calendar won’t have magically solved everything. There will still be dishes and emails and people who drive you slightly bananas.

But maybe, just maybe, you’ll have a few small pockets of peace tucked into your memory. A reminder that slowing down doesn’t mean giving up, but rather choosing, with intention, what deserves your energy and what doesn’t.

Or maybe you’ll just have baked and eaten some really good banana doorstop cake. That’s a win, too!