The Holiday Choice

photo credit: Lucie Liz

As we move deeper into the holiday season, the questions arise:

What do you love about the holidays?

What do you dread about the holidays?

What more is possible beyond the stress of the season?

How will you choose to celebrate this year?

I love Christmas. Specifically I love Christmas Eve. Now I know many of you don’t celebrate Christmas, but maybe you can relate through the rituals and experiences of your own special holiday celebrations. I grew up in a traditional Catholic environment in New Orleans, and though I am more spiritual than religious, I have always loved Christmas Eve. What a special time! As a child, we would go out to a fancy dinner - just the five of us - my parents and me and my younger brother and sister - and then come home and drink mugs of hot cocoa, talk and laugh, and open the gifts we’ve wrapped from each other. It was always cozy and special, and it is a tradition we have maintained with our own children even post-divorce. Truly - it’s wonderful.

And I do love so many other joys of the season:

• sipping hot apple cider

• smelling the wreaths and Christmas trees

• singing Christmas Carols

• finding delightful gifts

• enjoying time with family and friends

• sensing the collective excitement in the air

All the classics of course - but I really, really adore these things!

How about you?

Do these conjure recollections of joy and pleasure?

Does it make you feel all cozy and warm and loving and connected?

Or are you having some mixed feelings?

It seems strange that I enjoy so many things of the season and yet, as soon as Thanksgiving is over and I start seeing Christmas trees popping up everywhere I start feeling overwhelmed and annoyed and resentful. And so, so far behind the eight-ball.

I mean, how will I get it all done this year?

Will it be the usual mad dash to the finish where I slide into home base exhausted with my hair standing on end? Will I be at the post office prepared to spend my entire paycheck on postage so it can get there in time? Will I be rushing to wrap gifts on Christmas Eve while the kids wait in the living room to exchange gifts? Will I be totally spent by Christmas night and need a week’s worth of vacation to recover?

The dread and then the rushing around. The shopping. The magic. The exhaustion.

What a strange pattern. What part of me drives this pattern? Did I choose this?

Of course we could go on about the cultural expectations and the consumerism that create an overwhelming pressure. And how we want to show everyone how much we love them and all that, but seriously, we do have options.

And I know many of you have made a different choice. Many of you have transformed your holiday traditions to feel more easeful, less materialistic, more adventurous, more connected.

How did you do it?

What inspired you to change your tradition?

What gave you the courage to go against the cultural grain?

I think what we need is a pattern interrupter.

What do you think?

What if you were to choose to make every step of the season a gift to yourself?

And you only did that next holiday thing if it felt truly wonderful and special and easeful and like a gift to yourself?

Yes. Not a gift to someone else. A gift to YOU.

Each. And Every. Thing.

There is a little child in each of us that is longing for us to give it our attention. Instead of focusing all our energy outward, let’s choose to give ourselves the gift of our own presence, our own love, our own attention, and see how much that fills our cup. And let’s choose to let go of what feels more like a burden than a gift. We can choose to fill ourselves up and watch as the joy spills out all around.

Think about it.

Try it on.

Experiment if you like.

How much beauty and wonder can you shower on yourself this holiday season?

How might buying gifts for others feel like a gift to yourself?

What could you do differently to soak in all this magic?

Where can you shift from “I have to” to “I want to”?

Where can you say “no” to stress and “yes” to ease?

What could you choose to let go of?

How much more love might you bring to your relationships when you’ve filled yourself up first?

If you experiment a bit, I think you may be surprised by what you find :)

May the true joys of the season be yours 💚