Festive table decoration with candle lights on wooden table with fir branches.

Tis the Season for Holiday Hacks and Tips

By Rebecca Hume | Tuesday, November 18, 2025

For some, the holiday season means the hustle and bustle of hosting, traveling, gift giving, and gatherings. For others, the end of the year is a time to slow down, cozy up, and practice gratitude. Whether you are hosting and traveling this year or spending quiet time reflecting, we have everything you need for the best holiday season yet. With accessible cooking and hosting hacks, holiday gift lists, travel advice, tips and tricks for managing stress and coping with loneliness, ideas for creating new holiday traditions, and more – this collection of Quest articles is meant to limit stress and increase joy this year.

In How to Have Your Best Holiday Season Yet, we check in with experts and community members for their advice on how to address five common holiday challenges so that you can stress less and focus more on the happiness of the season. Check out their advice here and read more below for useful holiday hacks and advice.

Hosting and Cooking Made Easy

Hosting a holiday gathering or preparing a meal for friends and family often requires a lot of planning, prepping, and work. For those living with a disability, the process can entail extra considerations. From mindset and perspective to innovative gadgets and life hacks, we have the tools and tips you need for hassle-free holiday hosting.

In Stress Free Holiday Entertaining, community members and experts share how the right mindset, taking the time to plan and prepare, remembering to have a good time, and giving gratefully can minimize your holiday hosting stress and help you remember why you are having the party in the first place.

The holiday season is synonymous with the gathering of friends and family to share a meal. Whether hosting dinner or creating a dish to bring to a loved one’s home, meal prep and cooking are key elements of holiday festivities. For those living with neuromuscular disease, muscle weakness, fatigue, and limited range of motion can make meal preparation challenging. In Holiday Hosting Hacks for Thanksgiving Dinner, we share tools and tips that can increase independence, safety, and accessibility in and out of the kitchen for every holiday.

Gabby Disalvo

Growing up as a full-time wheelchair user living with myofibrillar myopathy (MFM), 21-year-old Gabby DiSalvo always considered the kitchen an inaccessible place, until she began cooking during the Covid-19 quarantine and fell in love with the process. She started an accessible cooking blog, Cooking on Wheels, to share her passion and advice with others, and even appeared as a guest on the Rachael Ray Show. In Cooking with a Disability? Yes, Chef!, Gabby shares adaptive cooking hacks, advice for cooking with a disability, and helpful holiday tips.

MDA Ambassador Barbara Ochoa, who lives with myotonic dystrophy (DM), is also passionate about cooking. In her MDA Ambassador Guest Blog: Cooking Tips & Tricks Just in Time for the Holidays, she shares how she has adapted in the kitchen as her disease progresses. From planning ahead and embracing the InstaPot to finding ways to increase nutritional value and holiday hosing hacks, she shares advice that resonates for a quiet dinner at home or happy holiday gathering.

And if you are hosting a large gathering at your home, presenting a clean home to your guests is often just as high on the to-do list as the menu. The cleaning tips, tricks, and tools in Accessible Spring Cleaning Tools & Tips can make cleaning your home a more accessible, efficient, and independent experience during the holidays and all year long.

Take the guess work out of gift giving

Another key aspect of the holiday season for many people is gift giving. For those who participate in gift giving, finding the perfect gift for everyone on your holiday shopping list can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. On the flip side, when others ask you what is on your holiday wish list, it might be a challenge to provide suggestions.

In Creative and Budget-Friendly Gifts to Say Thank You to Your Caregivers, we share gift ideas that friends, loved ones, and caregivers alike will love. From small tokens of appreciation and self-care items to thoughtful personal-interest gifts and treats that everyone will love, you are sure to find great gift ideas that won’t break the bank.

For the readers in your life, National Read a Book Day: Spotlight on Community Authors and Books to Add to Your Holiday Shopping List This Year: Spotlight on Community Authors feature books written by members of the neuromuscular disease community. Including motivational books, personal memoirs, fiction, poetry, children’s books, and books about parenting, you’re certain to find something here for every book lover on your holiday shopping list.

The MDA Quest Media Holiday Product Guide is the perfect place to shop for gift-giving inspiration and possibly find a thing or two for your own wish list. This guide is designed to help you find tried-and-true products that make life more independent, stylish, and fun. All the products on this curated list were chosen by MDA Ambassadors, who shared exactly how each product helps them in their daily lives.

Accessible holiday travel tips

Traveling to visit family or friends during the holiday season is often an added stressor for those living with disabilities. In the articles below, we share expert tips from seasoned travelers as they share their advice on how to navigate flying, ground travel, and avoid mishaps while traveling with a wheelchair and/or medical equipment.

Managing stress and finding joy

The holidays are meant to be a joyful season, but in reality – the season can often also bring stress. In Holiday Cheer: Smart Tips to Manage the Stress of the Season and the Quest Podcast Episode 9: Combating the Stress of the Holidays, we offer applicable advice so that you can stress less and enjoy the season more.

Creating simple holiday traditions is also an easy and special way to create meaningful memories while making the busy holiday season a little happier and brighter. Celebrating special traditions, either on your own or with loved ones, adds excitement and joy to your holiday season with magical moments each year. Make your holiday season a little brighter with the fun and easy ideas in Holiday Traditions to Make Your Season Happier.

Staying cozy at home

Allyson Pack-Adair

While the holiday season is a busy time of gathering for many, for many others it is a quieter season spent at home. For those who don’t have local family and friends to gather with, the holidays and winter season can sometimes bring feelings of loneliness. If this time of year weighs you down, Coping with Loneliness at the Holidays offers strategies to lessen loneliness from people in the neuromuscular disease community who have been there. Ally Pack-Adair, who lives with a mitochondrial disease, says that feelings of loneliness and isolation often hit her harder around the holiday season – and that focusing on her mental health helps her to cope. In her MDA Ambassador Guest Blog: Prioritizing Mental Health to Beat the Winter Blues, she reminds others in the community that they are not alone and shares her strategies to deal with negative feelings and embrace the season.

One way to embrace the season is by enjoying rest and relaxation in the cozy comfort of your own home. Get Cozy with Accessibility and Independence This Winter provides products and hacks that can help you snuggle in, cozy up, and enjoy your favorite leisure-time activities with accessibility and independence.

Another powerful way to increase happiness is by adopting the habit of practicing gratitude. Choosing to approach each day and experience with gratitude can have a significant impact on your mental, emotional, social, and even physical health. Seven Easy and Effective Ways to Increase Gratitude in Your Life shares simple practices that can help you cultivate a level of appreciation in your life that will make you happier and healthier – during the holiday season and all year long.