Although not everyone celebrates Christmas, this seems like a good time of year to reflect on how we experience holidays, regardless of what holidays we observe.

Holidays are meant to be enjoyable, but to enhance that enjoyment, it might help to reflect on how to handle the less pleasant aspects of holiday times. First, we may feel pressured to get a great deal done: cooking, baking, cleaning, buying and wrapping gifts, etc. We may also feel pressured emotionally, either by regrets or losses that feel sharper at holiday times, or by the sense that we should feel guilty if we’re not experiencing the emotions that traditionally go along with that holiday.

Writing Exercise: Think of a holiday that’s especially meaningful for you and picture that holiday approaching. How do feel? What thoughts come into your mind as you contemplate that holiday? How might you feel more at peace with it?

You might also like to use one or more of these quotations as a prompt for writing.  

Quotations:

“I think happiness really happens when you least expect it: it’s when you’re not really thinking about it, when you’re not trying to achieve it, when you’re not trying to get the perfect holiday, the perfect life, the perfect body, the perfect existence.” — Bill Bailey

“The holiest of holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; the secret anniversaries of the heart.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others’ burdens, easing each other’s loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of the holidays.” — W.C. Jones

“During the holidays, your pain may be closer to the surface. The ritual and intimacy of the holidays may make you more emotional. Remember that your emotions are normal and natural, and when you feel them it means it’s time for you to feel them.” – Alan D. Wolfelt

“It makes one’s mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment.” ― David Sedaris

 

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