HURRIED CHORES MAKE FOR HARRIED HOLIDAYS

Ah, the sounds of Christmas. Choirs singing carols. Church bells ringing. And nerves jangling as one more chore is added to the season's "To Do" list.

Santa Claus isn't the only one making a list and checking it twice, and he's not the only one worrying whether he'll make the Dec. 25 deadline for completing all of the items on that list.

There are gifts to be purchased, wrapped and delivered, cards to be addressed and mailed, cookies and other goodies to be made, dinners to be cooked and family and friends to be visited, all in the space of a month or so.

It's a time of year when many people find only stress in rituals that are supposed to bring comfort and joy.

"There's so much stress because expectations are so high," said Debbie Leoni, a registered nurse and director of the Fitness and Wellness Center at Southeast Missouri Hospital. "People have a lot of demands on them. There's all kinds of pressures, financial and emotional concerns. There's things at holiday time that can bring back good and bad memories, and that brings on a lot of stress."

The holidays can be especially grim for people suffering from depression or the loss of a loved one, said Sue Floyd, president of the Depressive and Manic Depressive Association of Southeast Missouri.

Floyd suffered a long bout with depression herself, and said Christmas hasn't always been merry.

"This is the first year I don't have the feeling, why is everybody so happy?" she said.

Sometimes the best thing people who feel a little fragile can do is to turn to their friends for holiday cheer, Floyd said.

"What a person wants to do is to seek out some friends who are cheery and will invite you over and ask if you want to spend Christmas with them," she said. "Sometimes family isn't always the best route."

Loneliness is a big problem during the holidays. So is the stress of stretching the budget to accommodate buying all those presents.

"The cost factor is a major stress factor," Floyd said. "People want to be able to give something to someone who makes them feel good. But it's not how much the gift costs that counts. It's the fact that you gave a gift."

Gifts don't have to cost money, she said. Sometimes giving your time can mean more than another sweater or bottle of perfume.

If you can't afford to buy a present, give family and friends "IOUs" for chores like doing laundry or taking out the trash.

With so much to do in so little time, trying to make everything perfect -- from the Christmas lights on the house to the frosting on the gingerbread -- is self-defeating, Leoni said.

"Probably the best thing they can do is to be realistic in their expectations for themselves and the people around them," she said.

Her advice? Don't sweat the small stuff. Let the kids decorate the yard. If things look a little slap-dash, so what? That's part of the charm.

"You have to let the holidays be the holidays and not try to make them into something else, 'cause they will never be the picture-perfect, magazine cover holidays," she said.

Floyd and Leoni both recommend ranking holiday tasks. Make a list of what has to be done, rank the items from most important to least important and get what you can done.

"If you can get a bunch of things done in a short chunk of time, do it," Leoni said.

Send the children to a movie or to friends' homes for an afternoon and wrap packages while the fruitcake bakes. Then take some time off for yourself.