12 Christmas in July To-Dos

As of today, there are 161 days until Christmas. That seems like oodles of time. But here’s a reality check: we are already a couple weeks past Half-Christmas on June 25. Holy Reindeers on ice, Batman! How did that happen? Relax and breathe, it’s not too late to hitch up the dog team and get sledding on your holiday preps so this can finally be the year you don’t spend your time from 12:01 am on December 15 to 2:45 am on December 25 racing faster than a hamster on a wheel trying to get things done. Or to really get a jump on the holiday season by enjoying a leisurely Christmas in July rather than waiting until December.

We at Vintage Unscripted are here to help. We’ve put our collective brains together and assembled this list of holiday tasks to get you started.

Christmas in July To-Do List

1. Throw a holiday party now. Tear up the calendar and get your yule on by the pool. Does anyone really need another social obligation, another peppermint cookie or another cup of eggnog in December?  Or…
2. Surprise someone with a Christmas Flash Mob. One of our older family members was stuck at home recovering from an injury. Her church friends flash mobbed her, filling the living room with Christmas carols and laughter. They weren’t there long, but those 20 minutes lifted her spirits for days. It’s actually more practical to do it in July–no danger of a herd of carolers tracking snow all over the floor.
3. Donate to your favorite non-profit now. It’s wonderful to collect warm winter clothes or gift cards or food for non-profits in December. But the need for socks, underwear, food and other essentials is year round. Warming the cockles of your heart in July, when you are already sweating profusely, still feels wonderful and helps the groups whose wish lists are looking for donors all year long.
4. Draw a map of where you have hidden all the Christmas gifts you’ve already purchased so you can avoid that frantic search we all know and love on December 24. Or so you can avoid purchasing the same thing again in three months because you forgot you already bought it. If you’re ridiculously ambitious, get them wrapped.
5. Start making gifts now. There is an entire genre of craft books dedicated to things you can make at the last minute, but let’s face it, there’s only so much you can do super ultra chunky weight yarn for fast knitting, glue guns for gluing interesting things to useful things and duct tape for making fashionable home accessories and coaster sets.
6. Write your Christmas letter. Leave blanks to fill in. You have about a 80-90% chance of predicting the rest of your year right now, especially if you generally make most of it up anyway.
7. Call the people you only call at Christmas. It feels as good in July as it does in December.
8. Take your Christmas photo, if you are Christmas photo people. This doesn’t mean get everyone into a sweater to pose by the fireplace, although you can. The best group photos are taken in the moment and not posed. Have the guy on the blanket next to you snap your photo when you’re wrapped in towels after a great boogie board session. Ask the bear to stop chasing you for a minute to take a photo of your group during a hike. Take a photo at a big family get together or wedding so it involves your essential family unit as well as aunts, uncles, cousins and anyone else who wanders by.
9. Sign up for a Jingle Bell fun run. You have plenty of time to train up for a 5K between now and December.
10. Remember Fido and Fluffy and order their Christmas collar early so you don’t forget. Again. And don’t forget the treats!
11. Copy family recipes (handwritten would be wonderful) onto vintage recipe cards for that extra special gift for your new daughter-in-law.
12. Dig out those boxes of family photos that you have been planning to organize for years and organize them at least enough to put together small albums for family members. There is nothing you can buy at a store that will mean more to your family. If you’re not tech savvy to do the scanning yourself, lots of photo stores offer scanning. You do the sorting, leave the scanning to them.

Vintage FYI:

Christmas in July is really a thing. As vintage sellers, we use Christmas in July to promote all the wonderful Christmas merchandise we have in our shops to tempt Christmas enthusiasts as well as art directors, editors and prop buyers into buying our treasures for their holiday catalogs, store displays, magazines and more. And down in the Southern Hemisphere where it’s currently winter, it’s not unusual to have a holiday celebration in July when is chilly and then again in December. (This revelation comes courtesy of the wonderful Australian woman detective series set in the 1920s, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.)