'Tis the season for traveling like Santa and his elves, with tons of gifts and packages in tow.

The Transportation Security Administration has several reminders for travelers bringing their holiday gifts onto a flight.

First off, remember that any liquid, aerosol or gel items are subject to the 3.4-ounce limit for carry-ons.

That includes these popular holiday foods, treats and gifts: cranberry sauce; cologne; creamy dips and spreads (including cheeses and peanut butter); gift baskets with food items such as salsa, jams and salad dressings; gravy; jams; jellies; lotions; maple syrup; oils and vinegars; perfume; salad dressing; salsa; sauces; snow globes; soups; wine, liquor and beer.

Pies and cakes can be brought through security, but are subject to additional screening (whatever that means! A TSA taste test maybe?).

Fliers are permitted to travel with wrapped gifts, but if the gifts set off the security alarm or there are any red flags, security officers may have to peel away your pretty paper take a closer look inside.

“We recommend passengers wrap gifts after their flight or ship them ahead of time, to avoid the possibility of having to open them during the screening process,” TSA advises.

So, really think about what’s in those packages, as it’s easy to forget about the contents once they’re wrapped.

Case and point, I was flying with gifts for my brother and his family one year, when airport security pulled me aside to tell me there was a foot-long knife in my carry-on. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me, and turned bright red and flustered. As it turned out, I had packed an at-home, sushi-making set for my brother that, indeed, included a foot-long sushi knife. But because it had been a couple weeks since I had wrapped it, I forgot about the knife. They confiscated the blade and I had to gift the sushi set minus one of its main ingredients.

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At holiday time, there is usually no shortage of travel experts telling you what to do to keep travel hassles to a minimum, offering long lists of things you need to do before your trip to avert disaster. But in truth, skills of avoidance can be much more valuable; there are a few things that, if avoided, will help you beat the more common pitfalls of the season.

So instead of making a list of what you need to do this year, here are six suggestions on what not to do that might make the planning and execution of your holiday trip much simpler.

1. Don't go on bad dates.
As I have noted a few times over the years, holiday travel is much more difficult when Christmas and New Year's fall on a weekend. When the holidays fall mid-week, travelers spread their travel over a broader range of days — in these cases, many folks take long weekends before or after the holiday, and the highest volume gets spread over 8-10 days or more. Also, folks making quick trips for just the holiday proper don't overlap as much as people trying to get back to work, and airports are less congested overall.

This year, we have almost a worst-case scenario, as both holidays fall on a Sunday. This will result in a lot of people ending work late the week before, and rushing back to work early the week after, all at the same time. In particular, the Sunday and Monday after New Year's Eve could be really harrowing, as many workplaces will be at full tilt by Tuesday, and everyone is going to be humping it home at the same time. There is nothing quite like a harrowing trip home to dull the positive effects of a holiday vacation.

If you can extend your vacation time into that following week, perhaps coming home on either the third or even fourth of January, you will have a much better go of things on your return trip.

For your convenience, here are this year's peak travel dates:

• December 22
• December 23
• December 26
• January 1
• January 2

2. Don't go crazy with carry-on baggage.
Since the day the term "overhead bin" was coined, holiday travelers have tried to bring as much stuff as possible into airplane cabins — and things have only gotten worse since the airlines instituted almost punitive checked baggage fees. And you can't blame folks, as the $25-$50 fees just to check a bag add up quickly on a roundtrip flight, especially for a family.

At this time of year, however, with more people in the air, and more stuff under their arms thanks to all the holiday gift-giving, you're more likely than ever to be penalized for oversized bags or forced to gate check your carry-on.

This isn't to say things are going to be fair; they're not. Some people will get on the plane with half their earthly belongings, and some will be told they need to gate check their extra Pillow Pet.

3. Don't travel too hung over, and definitely not drunk.
Every January, I hear at least one story of a passenger who woke up face down in the aisle, or who passed out and needed to be crowbarred out of an aircraft loo, or who merely left most of the contents of his insides on the plane one way or another. A formidable hangover is already miserable enough; you don't need to live through it on an airplane, where privacy, comfort, fresh air, and easy and quick access to a place to be alone with your hangover are basically non-existent.

Think about it — you're in a middle seat, badly hung over, and the seatbelt sign is on, the plane is pitching around, the person in the aisle seat has eyeshades and headphones on, and the bathroom is occupied, likely with other hung-over people who are not coming out any time soon. Then the plane lands, and there is a wait for a gate, and the air-conditioning is turned off. You have a real problem, and it's not going away until you get fully up the gangway. That can be a long, lonely and miserable experience — if you can remember it.

As for flying when significantly drunk, tolerance for even slightly inebriated behavior in the air and at the airport has plummeted the past few years. Don't make the news by getting Tasered, injured in airport jail cells, denied boarding or escorted from the plane by police. Talk about a holiday from hell.

4. Don't trust airport parking lots to be empty or easy to navigate.
At peak travel times, airport parking lots can fill up quickly, and you will lose time driving around looking for the few open spots, or driving to alternate lots, or going back and forth trying to figure out where you can actually park without dropping a half-day's pay for the privilege. Additionally, staffing is usually down a bit for the holidays, so there seem to be fewer buses, fewer open pay lanes on the way out and fewer people to ask for directions to alternate parking.

And in the case of a winter storm during your travels, moving around the airport gets even more difficult, as snow removal vehicles dominate the traffic lanes, shuttle buses have to navigate around snow banks, parking spots disappear as they are filled by snow piles from plowing trucks, and your car is piled high with snow and ice that you have to clear and scrape off with your credit card, as you hadn't yet put an ice scraper in the car.

To keep yourself out of trouble, check airport Web sites (although not that many offer real-time parking information just yet), allow extra time and look into off-airport lots or even a sleep and fly option.

5. Don't wait too long to book.
There was a time that risking a last-minute holiday booking was a fair bet. With more planes in the air, there were more empty seats; before online bookings, some hotels would inevitably fail to sell out; and rental car companies had not downsized their fleets, so you could always get a car. Among my more travel-savvy friends, stories of last-minute trips booked at rock-bottom prices were common.

All that has changed now, and it is more common to hear about travelers who decided they just couldn't afford to take a trip than about folks who found a trip so cheap they couldn't afford not to take it.

6. Don't assume things will go to plan.
Traveling during the peak holiday season, particularly in regions where winter weather can be an issue, may be as unpredictable as anything you will do all year. And I don't mean only Detroit, Minneapolis or other northern cities; when a rare snowstorm hits southern cities like Atlanta or Houston, the situation is almost always worse, as they are neither really trained nor equipped to deal with it. (For help coping with snowy weather on the roads and at the airport, see Winter Travel Tips.)

Additionally, your fellow travelers are in larger groups, with more stuff and less experience than at any other time of the year, bar none. This is not to disparage those folks — getting a family of four through security during peak travel times with security agents barking semi-coherent orders is no cakewalk, even for experienced travelers, and they have as much right to use the air transit system as does any road warrior salesperson. I would even turn this one around; complaining about inexperienced travelers during the holidays is like complaining about French people when you take a vacation in France. If you don't want to travel with a lot of people around you, don't travel during the holidays.

For my part, I'll be traveling this holiday season, right there with the noobs putting wrapped presents on the security conveyor belt. See you then!

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The ugly season of travel has arrived, with snowy runways, ice storms and other winter-weather related delays nearly certain to plague countless air passengers through the holidays and beyond. But, say experts, there are some smart strategies that can help make bad situations more workable for travelers, even if they can’t stop the snow.

It begins as early as purchasing your tickets. “When booking, when you can, book the earliest flight of the day,” said Jeanenne Tornatore, senior editor for the Internet travel company Orbitz. “The reason being is that typically, the early morning flights are usually on time — those flights are already at the gate and have already been de-iced, so there’s no back up yet. Also, if your flight is canceled, you have a better chance of a flight out.”

It’s the snowball effect: As more and more flights are canceled throughout the day, competition becomes fiercer for rebooking the remaining open seats, she said. So if you were originally scheduled to fly out in the afternoon, but your flight is delayed or canceled, there’s a much greater chance you’ll have to wait until the next day for a flight because all the open seats will be gone.

Also, it may be worth the extra money during winter to book a nonstop flight, rather than one with connections, to minimize the possibility of weather delays, Tornatore said. And, if you have a choice, try to avoid connecting through regions that can be hard hit by storms; Denver, Chicago and Minneapolis come to mind, though these airports are usually pretty good at dealing with snow and ice, she said.

Winter travelers should carry smartphones with key selected apps for airlines or ticket services and important phone numbers loaded and ready to go should their flight get canceled, recommends Mike Benjamin, CEO of FlightView, a service that provides real-time flight information for travelers. At that point, everyone else will be headed to stand in line at the airline counter for service, something you should do also, just in case. But while that line is inching along, you can use your phone to rebook online because you've got that app waiting, Benjamin said. “Gate agents are pretty overwhelmed at that point, so I would use the phone. The online option is faster and gets you to what you want quicker. Once the problem arises, this is really a time to put your smart phone to test.”

Of course, you can also just call from your phone, but sometimes call centers can quickly become overwhelmed as well, he said. Tornatore agrees: Using your smart phone “can make the difference between getting one of the last few seats on the next flight versus potentially being stuck for the night.”

Another thing to keep in mind when buying a ticket is where you buy it, Benjamin said: “Back to planning ahead, it’s generally easier to rebook if you booked with the airline in the first place ... The airlines like to deal with tickets of their own.”

Have more than just apps for the airlines available, Tornatore said — make sure you have info about any car rentals and hotel reservations you may have made available on your phone. That way, if you are delayed, you can “let them know you’re going to be a day late so they don’t give away your room or car.”

Both experts say it’s important to remember that airlines don’t have an obligation to provide accommodations in the case of weather-related delays. This is where having the ability to book a hotel from your phone can also be of great help. “With weather cancellations, there are a lot of people scrambling to get in a hotel around the airport, so you should definitely download apps [to] find hotels near where you are, so you can purchase directly from your smartphone,” Tornatore said.

If you’re traveling to or from a sunny destination, don’t think you’re off the hook for weather problems, as storm delays can affect the whole system, delaying or preventing planes from traveling from one airport to another. That means it’s a good idea to sign up for any flight alert services available; at Orbitz, for example, passengers can choose voicemail, e-mail or text alerts on flight status. Most airlines offer similar services.

Which brings Tornatore and Benjamin to another important point: don’t put chargers for your electronics in checked baggage. You might be at the airport quite a while and need to power your phone.

“Always pack chargers in your carry on, medication you might need for you or your kids,” Tornatore said. “And I would even bring extra essentials for your kids, an extra change of clothes, easy and light.”

If you have a baby, carry formula and diapers to get you through 24 hours, and plenty of snacks, she added.

And most of all, stay calm, Benjamin said, because despite your best efforts, things might still go awry: “It’s the weather that’s causing it. Life is too short to get upset about it.”

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