Finding Holiday Spirit From Within

2020…. Ahhh yes, 2020.
The year when even whispers of cancelled holidays and celebrations are becoming common to my ear.
Here in the UK they are jumping through hoops to keep “Christmas happening” while my family in Canada has resigned to a few decorations and all very low key.
I’ve talked to a lot of people who are experiencing this next blow of an overwhelming year.
So, I wanted to come in and create some perspective shift and holiday love.
Even when plans don’t go as they usually do, even if you find yourself alone or struggling, no matter what you believe, no matter where you live, there is always something magical and light about this time of year; if you let it in.
I’m pretty big on any excuse for a party.
My family and I have had many holiday seasons alone and even more times on barely any budget. When my daughters were young Christmas time meant staying up late, with blue fingers sewing doll clothes out of the clothes they’d grown out of.
My husband and I soon made the holiday motto we live by; Music, movies and food… all resonating with holiday cheer.
It doesn’t matter what’s happening outside. Rather everything can be felt within your four walls.

One Christmas, before I met my husband, I was an au pair here in the UK.
I spent the Christmas holidays backpacking alone and found myself in a B&B in Glastonbury at Christmas. I was faced with the question of what to do on a day usually spent with my large family. Armed with a box of After eights, a couple of gifts I’d bought myself, some books and a frozen Christmas dinner (which my hostess replaced with a plate from their family affair downstairs.) I had a morning walk, relished in the scenery, made a fortune worth of phone calls and settled down to be engulfed by holiday spirit. I let it find me rather than myself pushing for it. It was unconventional. I felt sick after polishing off all the chocolates in one sitting, but I look back at that year with fondness.
 
This time of year resonates as pure magic for me.
Living in the country in Canada for my children’s early years we focused on the magic of life under the earth. Surrounded by snow the world appears dead, paused in a state of inertia. And yet, the faith that it will bloom again, that leaves will return, that sun will shine, that life flows and continues on a cycle, that there is light in the darkness, oh it gives me chills to allow the true meaning of this season to fall over me.
I’ll be bold to say that this doesn’t have to be a time of religious belief, but it also doesn’t have to be a time of commercialism or even family traditions.
Rather, I want to encourage you to look for the state of pause within yourself.
This has been a sticky year. The energy that has filled the world has been often fearful and heavy… like fallen snow.
But within you, within everyone, is the light of hope and life force that transforms everything.

This isn’t a time to mourn loss dinners with loved ones, rather a time to love them fiercely, even when apart.
This isn’t a time to miss shopping with massive bags of gifts, more it’s time to pause and appreciate the life that surrounds you.
Mostly, it isn’t a time to push for what to do next or how things can work out or what spring will look like… rather it’s a time of faith and trust in the magic that is continually flowing.
For just like leaves on trees, or bulbs in the ground, spring will spring again. Life force will flow. Spirit is present and this too shall pass.
Give yourself permission to drop the pressure and the push. Take up the concept of the seasonal pause and let the life force of the universe flow through it all around you.
 
I send you all my love and light for this coming season.
May it be filled with moments of awe and surprise.
May it delight you as only the universe knows how to.
May your home ring with joy and light and may it remind you that, even in the darkest night, there is always light with the coming dawn.
Life force is always flowing.
Happy Holidays.

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