One Day You’ll Thank Me: Toni Street’s top tips for Christmas as a busy parent

Toni Street is New Zealand's unofficial queen of Christmas. Photo / Supplied.

Welcome to the Herald’s parenting podcast: One Day You’ll Thank Me. Join parents and hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.

Want to get in touch with the podcast? Email the team at odytm@nzme.co.nz

Christmas may be “the most wonderful time of the year” according to the old crooner Andy Williams, but the reality is, it can also be the most stressful: amid the rush of the final school term and finishing up at work for the year, parents are somehow also meant to find the time to set up a Christmas tree, organise presents, a photo with Santa for the kids, and potentially host a houseful of extended family.

On this week’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me, our hosts get some top tips from Coast radio co-host and New Zealand’s unofficial Queen of Christmas, Toni Street, for creating a winning Christmas for the busiest of families.

Street’s number one tip when it comes to Christmas is to start early, celebrating the season, not just the day.

This helps “gets the kids in that festive zone as well”.

She encourages her own little trio, Juliet, 10, MacKenzie, 7 and Lachie, 4, to get into the Christmas spirit with dress ups, baking and charity.

“They choose a little [festive] headband every morning. We’ve got a stack of them, they’re cheap as chips,” says Street, adding Lachie has “asked to go dressed as an elf to preschool for the last week, not just the hat with normal clothes - full noise. He’s got candy cane tights and a little elf vest.”

Christmas baking with her children to make personalised gifts is also a Street family tradition.

“They love it. It can be quite chaotic, but you don’t do anything elaborate. You do easy recipes,” she tells ODYTM hosts sharing her quick and easy Apricot Truffle Balls and Christmas Bark.

“Half the time as a parent you go, ‘Oh, we should really take a gift for the teacher today or tomorrow.’ And you don’t have time to go to the shop.

“So, if you’ve already got the baking there, you just wrap it up and voila, it’s all ready.”

As much as parents want their kids to experience the joy of Christmas, the radio host also wants to remind hers it’s not the case for every child. So, a trip to a charity gifting shop is also an annual event.

“I feel like one of the biggest things to remind your kids of is that they’re blimmen’ lucky at this time of year … so I’m actually taking them to the Joy Store. You just have to get in touch with the Kindness Collective. They’ll give you the address and you take unwrapped presents, and then they distribute them to any family that needs them.”

Street will also host a party of 25 at her place this year and has some clever tricks for managing the mayhem.

“Because otherwise, the day can go and you just feel like a frazzled mess and you didn’t enjoy it.”

• For more of Toni Street’s top tips for celebrating the festive season with kids, as well as Donna Hay’s guide to creating a special yet stress-free Christmas feast, listen to this week’s episode below.

• You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. One Day You’ll Thank Me will return with new episodes on February 2nd