It's December 21.  There are 4 days to go and there are at least a million ways to ruin Christmas.  You can do like I did on my 10th Christmas.  You can go snooping.  You can search the house until you find that long-awaited and much-anticipated Minnesota Vikings Football helmet from the Sears catelog.  You can find it in it's bag.  You can carefully remove the staples from the bag, pull out the helmet, try it on only to find it's too small and it's the largest one they make.  Then you can delicately put it back into the bag, carefully replacing the staples into the exact holes from which you removed the original staples.  Then you can go sit in your room and be bummed on numerous levels.  First because you have already seen the gift you had been longing for for months.  In addition, you also get to be bummed because said gift is no longer going to work and there's no replacement for it.  Yeah you can do that to ruin Christmas.  But if you're older than 10, I'm guessing you've found even more sophisticated ways of undermining you're own holiday cheer.

I suppose that the thing most of us will do is second guess if you've done enough.  You'll consider if you should actually try to squeeze in two parties a night between now and Wednesday.  You'll bake yourself half crazy.  You'll clean the house, rake more leaves, and try and do more of everything and stress yourself to the max.  

My suggestion is to do the opposite.  If you have two parties per night, consider dropping both of them.  Friends who really love you will understand.  If you think you haven't done enough, rather than spending more time at the mall or shopping online, consider sitting down and thinking of something truly thoughtful for that person.  What would that person truly love if you gave it of yourself rather than buying something for them.  Maybe it's a letter.  Maybe it's an act of kindness.  Maybe you can excuse them from that party you have tonight.  

Whatever you do, make as many silent nights between now and Wednesday as you can.  Do things to destress yourself and others.  Be kind.  Have a very Merry Christmas or whatever festive celebration you may be having at this time of year.  And if you're not celebrating anything, try and have a silent night all of your own.