My teens are obsessed with Christmas carols this year (and every year).

“It’s the holidays!” they exclaim when I suggest that perhaps we could listen to NPR instead of the Christmas carol station. This is, at least to the kids, is the most wonderful time of the year.

Many adults love the idea of the holidays more than their actual experience of them — mostly because their list of holiday-related tasks and obligations outweighs the joy of it all. So that I can actually enjoy the holidays, I’ve devised the three-part plan below.

Step One: Prioritize connection. ‘Tis the season for reconnecting. We reconnect with our friends and neighbors through a handful of annual parties. We reconnect with our more distant friends through cards and photos. And we reconnect with our extended family consistently throughout the season — our holiday rituals are what help make our family truly our family.

For example, the weekend before Christmas, my cousins always fly in from Massachusetts and Washington and Florida for a big family Christmas party, complete with a funny “white elephant” gift exchange. A few days before Christmas, my mom always makes spritz cookies with the kids, a tradition started in Germany with her mother. We light the candles of the menorah and say prayers each night during Hanukkah, something my husband’s Jewish family has been teaching me and my kids.

All of this is about renewing our sense that we are a part of something larger than ourselves. Let me not mince words here: This sense that we are connected and part of a larger whole is the single strongest predictor of happiness that we have. It is true that the holidays have become depressingly commercial in our culture, with a massive focus what each individual will get and what kids want in terms of material gifts. Soon every news report will include something about how the economy is responding to this year’s wave of massive collective consumption.

But we can choose to focus on relationships instead of individual gift lists this holiday season. Not surprisingly, people who focus on family or religion during the holidays report higher happiness than those who don’t.

Step Two: Schedule the fun, the tasks — and the necessary downtime. There is so much going on at this time of the year, I know that I have to sit down with my calendar and block out time to get a Christmas tree, shop for our Hanukkah meals, take a holiday card photo, etc.

First, I make a simple list of all the things I need and want to do in the next month. Second, I block off time on our family calendar to actually do those things — including the not-so-obvious things, like scheduling time to update my address book so that our holiday cards make it to where they’re supposed to. (Research suggests that telling your brain when you will do something reduces stress.) Third, I actually schedule downtime on my calendar, like weekend mornings when we commit to not going anywhere or doing anything.

Once I do that, I realize that I’m not going to have enough time to do everything on my list. But I can’t skip my downtime, or I won’t actually enjoy the holidays. And so I have to decide: What are the most important things for me to do and events for me to attend?

That leads me back to Step One: Where do we get the most bang for our relationship buck? Everything that doesn’t serve to connect us to each other or something larger than ourselves gets nixed.

It is never easy to stick to the plan. Inevitably, someone will call to see if we can go ice skating on a weekend morning when we’ve scheduled downtime, and we’ll all want to go. But if we can’t easily reschedule the downtime for the next day, we’ll say no.

I’ll get a lot of pushback on this decision from my family, but I’ll remind them that more is not necessarily better, and that I’m actually not that fun to be around when I’m exhausted.

Step Three: Trade in expectations for appreciation. Most of us suffer from what I think of as an abundance paradox: Because we have so much, it becomes easy to take our good fortune for granted; as a result, we are more likely to feel disappointed when we don’t get what we want than to feel grateful when we do.

This tendency can be especially pronounced during the holidays — but we can overcome it by consciously cultivating gratitude.

We can do so in three ways. First, we can create holiday gratitude traditions (see this post for ideas how). Second, we can intentionally expose ourselves to other people’s suffering, and make a real effort to help. An afternoon spent serving the homeless can make most anyone feel instantly, and deeply, grateful. Finally, we can make an effort to notice when our expectations are leading us to desire something different than what we have — a recipe for disappointment. One of the best happiness tips I know of: find something to love in the moment you are in right now.

As the holidays approach, we will likely feel stressed and exhausted, but we need not feel like victims to this time of year. Our exhaustion is not inevitable; how tired or stressed we get is often a result of the choices we make (or fail to make) ahead of time. So while I think it is too early for holiday music, it is not too early to start making the choices that will lead us to a low-stress, high-joy holiday season.

Even though we say we can’t buy happiness, we often behave as though we can. Why else would we spend so much time shopping? What if I told you that you actually can buy happiness, for yourself, or for someone else? Well, you can! Here’s how.

For starters, remember that there is a huge difference between real joy — or any other positive emotion, like gratitude, or love, or hope — and the gratification that can come from buying something (or receiving a gift). Positive emotions like awe and compassion have different effects on our nervous system than material rewards, like gifts, do.

Positive emotions function to reverse stress — to put the breaks on any lingering fight-or-flight response that might be making us feel anxious or unsettled. In contrast, material purchases and gifts trigger the reward center in our brain, which usually delivers a nice hit of pleasure… and then leaves us wanting more. The lingering feeling that more would be better can be blamed on a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Though dopamine does deliver that initial pleasurable feeling, its main purpose is to create desire, or craving, in the brain, which acts as a motivating force. This is why when we treat ourselves with food or a shopping trip we are often soon left wishing for more (rather than satisfied with what we already have).

So here’s how to buy happiness: Make purchases that foster real positive emotions, either in yourself or others.

Here are some ideas for your happiness gift list:

• Buy experiences like a trip, concert, movie, or dinner out — especially those that foster connections between friends and family members. This gives people a chance to feel emotions like love, excitement, anticipation (and maybe awe, elevation, or inspiration, depending on the activity). The feeling of connection we get when we do something fun with people we love is one of our most powerful sources of happiness.

• Don’t buy gifts from a list or registry. One of the reasons that we love opening presents so much is that people find surprises exciting. Excitement is a positive emotion. This means that a gift has the potential to bring happiness mostly through the joyful anticipation it brings…not the actual gift itself, which might be gratifying but will often leave us wanting more. If a receiver chooses a gift themselves and knows what they are getting, the joyful anticipation won’t be there.

• Give something that enables the receiver to give to others. (I’m a fan of ‘Tis Best gift cards, for example.) Believe it or not, giving brings far more happiness than receiving, and so when we want to give happiness, the best thing we can do is enable someone else to be a giver. When they are able to give to people or causes they feel passionately about, gift receivers are likely to feel generosity, awe, compassion, love, gratitude, or engagement — all big and powerful positive emotions.

Looking for ways to give yourself a little pressy? Spend your money on your health. Really! Although happiness does lead tobetter health (primarily by reducing stress), health is also a major predictor of happiness — on average, healthy people are 20% happier. So buy yourself some vitamins, and those Zumba classes you love so much.

Here’s a no-brainer present for yourself: my new Establish an Exercise Habit Mini-Course, designed to teach you how to establish a lifelong exercise habit for yourself. This class is only $9.99, and I promise it will pave the way for you to be healthier AND happier in the coming year.

Happy Holidays!