How To Best Prepare, Live and Enjoy the Holidays
Christmas is not just a date. It’s a spirit, an attitude and something you create. Many years we get to Christmas and just end up exhausted. We may be disappointed or deceived in our expectations, and we have to face the real family that we have, not an ideal one we imagine. But how do we best do that? How can we lessen stress and pressure, and create more moments of what supposedly is the Christmas spirit: love, joy, closeness, connection, and peace?
About Christmas Magic
When I grew up, Christmas time and the weeks before the big family celebration were always very special. I remember the patience and dedication with wich my mom decorated the house, we made tons of cookies and filled the house with this beautiful homey smell, we had times to sing together and make music, or read poems and Christmas stories. There was this sense of anticipation and something magical about to happen that built and culminated in a moment of indescribable intensity when we kids were allowed to open the door and see the decorated tree for the first time – and the gifts underneath.
The Reality of the Holidays
It sounds like a fairy-tale, doesn’t it? It was, and I still have all those experiences – even though now I am the mom creating them. But I also remember how, growing up, there were many experiences that colored the holidays in a different way. I realize that I was filled with such high expectations about how magical it had or has to be, that I experienced incredible stress and a lot of frustration. On one hand, it was a huge responsibility to “get everything perfect” (when I am sure that was never my mom’s goal to begin with, but it was mine). And over the years I realized that no family is perfect, and that it is too high an expectation to want peace and joy and nothing else – after all, we are all people, and we feel things. And especially when we are under pressure for things to be good, the tensions, conflicts and problems have a tendency to come out.
I also know that Christmas is the time of the highest suicide rate, and all the jolly ideas, sounds and images that surround us can make people feel really isolated, alone and depressed.
So I’ve been rediscovering what Christmas means to me. I realize that maybe for you, the holidays have a different celebration, or no religious context at all. But all that doesn’t matter: At the end, I think this is the time of year where we all wish for closeness and connection, and it would be wonderful if we could experience love, joy and peace. And now I know, those experiences are something that first and foremost, we have to create and find within ourselves. We are the ones who experience “the Christmas spirit” – or who don’t. We are the ones who get to create our own memories, and those of our kids.
It All Starts With You
So it is always a season that makes us wish for a lot, and desire closeness, calmness and joy in our relationships with ourselves, our friends and family. I am convinced now that being able to enjoy the holidays has a lot to do with skills that we can learn, and attitudes that we can choose. And the more we choose calmness and gratitude over stress and pressure, the better we will feel. And the better we feel, the better it feels for those around us. And the more we all enjoy the experience.
My Thanks to Life and a Gift to You
So this year, I have experienced some rough patches and big challenges, and I have received incredible support from my family, but also from people who just came into my life and showed up to help me, no questions asked. I am incredibly grateful, and I want to give back – to them, to life, and to all of you.
So I decided to share with you some of my most appreciated actions, inner processes, perspectives, thoughts and some of the moments that make my holiday season special, and help me to connect with what is there, and make the most of it. I hope like me you will discover, that the magic lies in the real existing moment, the real existing you, and within the courage to connect with the positive, and to be present with what first seems to be “an obstacle”.
24 Seasonal Moments of Love and Peace
Starting on December 1st, the will be a new door for you to open, a new post to read every day until December 24th. I invite you to reflect, feel, play, create and take action, with just a few minutes for yourself every day. They will help you experience the peace, calmness, love and joy that we so desire this time of the year.
Open 24 Doors to Your Experience of Love and Peace!
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Open the first door here!
Christmas is my favourite time of year. Mine is extra special filled with years of so much love. I was born on Christmas day and trust me, my birthday was very important. It would drive me crazy and my parents as well I am sure, just how insistent I was that my birthday presents were not wrapped in Christmas paper. I am adopted and my parents had me at three weeks old. I could not have hand picked better parents. To me they were perfect and I adored them so very much. When in a store or anywhere that I was asked my birth date, the reply is always oh what a gift to your mother. I would always laugh and say well I was regifted. That is usually met with different comments and some people get very uncomfortable. I speak up and say ohh I do not say that with sadness at all. I am the lucky one. My parents had two biological children of their own when I came along. To show just how grounded and secure I was, when kids are just being kids. I could often be heard saying “ they were stuck with you two but they chose me”;)
My parents both passed away in 2013 and I pray they knew how much I loved them and how grateful I was. I know I told them but as I age the silliest things enter our minds.
At Christmas I do feel even more grateful to have had the love and life I did. When you hear stories of… oh I had to sleep in a dresser drawer. For me that was true. My Mom thought she was being interviewed when she arrived at the place my biological mother lived. No at all she drove home with me and in the dresser drawer I went to sleep. If only I could have seen the look on my Dads face when he came home from work at 11:00pm and my Mom told him guess what dear.
Oh the memories.
That’s what Christmas means to me!
Oh, what a beautiful reflection, Tammy! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your meaning of Christmas!