Kristen Bell Is Teaching Her Kids To 'Reject The Stress Of The Holidays'
Yes, the holidays are lovely and warm and wonderful, but they can also be wildly stressful — and Kristen Bell wants to make sure her two daughters know that the holidays don’t have to be perfect
We’ve all had our holiday meltdowns, whether it be about a dish that went very awry or a bogus gift we got from the mother-in-law. There is so much stress baked into the holidays, and The Good Place’s Kristen Bell wants to make sure her and Dax Shepard’s kids know that doesn’t have to be the norm.
“We are attempting to model the behavior for our kids to not get too uppity or too intent on things being perfect,” she explained to Today. In order to make sure their daughters Lincoln and Delta are able to chill during the holidays, Bell and Shepard model what they deem the best way to celebrate the holidays: with no wild expectations except to hang out in matching PJs with your family.
The family also indulges in a tradition from Shepard’s family. The youngest person gets to open presents first, and then everyone else follows based on their ages. Makes sense to us, especially when you have an impatient toddler begging to tear into their gifts!
“Basically grandma’s definitely asleep at the end,” Bell explained. “The older you are, chances are you have more patience. So it works for us.”
‘We want the whole day to be lazy,’ Bell explained
And if we really think about what the holidays are about — spending time with those you love — we think this is the perfect way to “live with ease during this time where everyone is supposed to plug back in,” as Bell puts it.
“We’ll do that in our holiday pajamas and look like crazy people walking through the neighborhood and we just don’t care,” Bell explained. This is a longstanding tradition, too. Before the couple had children, Bell would buy matching jammie sets for Shepard and their dogs.
“I would buy matching sets for Dax, and I and our dogs. He very peacefully went along with it, which I’m very grateful for,” she shared.
Bell also said that getting things delivered (she has an endorsement deal with Target’s delivery brand Shipt) really helps keep things calm during the most wonderful time of the year.
“Around the holidays, the only thing that I will not partake in is the stress of it all. And that’s been a lesson I’ve learned late in life. I attempted to have my first few Christmases when I hosted, or when we first had kids, to be genuinely from the ground up ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ I was like, ‘I’ll grow the carrots we’ll eat on Christmas night!’ And it drove me crazy! So over the last five years, I’ve made a real commitment to start delegating, and I’ve used a lot of delivery services because that is a real part of delegating when you’re in a family — you have to have things delivered.”
