With the high point of the holiday season upon us this week, we’d like to take a minute to give you, our reader, a bit of advice:

Just relax. Breathe in, breathe out.

It’s too easy at this time of year to get caught up in trying to achieve the “perfect” Christmas. You try to find the perfect decorations, make the perfect meal, buy the perfect presents.

Well, guess what — it ain’t gonna happen.

And the world isn’t going to come to an end when it doesn’t.

So your house doesn’t look like a winter wonderland straight out of a Martha Stewart special. So your family doesn’t act like they belong in a Norman Rockwell painting. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is the opportunity to spend time with your imperfect family, the people you care about no matter how much they drive you crazy — that uncle who tells the same jokes every year or the sibling who seems to outshine you no matter what you do.

The time spent with loved ones will provide more memories than those perfect decorations or that perfect meal ever will.

And don’t forget your friends — they can be a surrogate family when, for whatever reason, you can’t be with your real one.