The holiday season can be such a fraught time. It seems odd to acknowledge that truth, given that it is supposed to be a magical time full of relaxed moments with family and friends, good food, and time out from the usual frenetic pace of life. Unfortunately, we have made the holidays just as pressure-filled and busy as every other time of the year. It no longer stands apart as a beacon of rest, reflection, and connection. What’s more, many people find themselves alone and isolated - feeling the holidays as a source of sadness. There’s a reason many communities host “blue Christmas” gatherings. How has it come to this? The holiday season is a source of stress and sadness for so many.
We rush about focused on gifts and decorating and trying to “get things just right”. What if we didn’t? What if we did less? What if we saw the holidays as an invitation to pause, to be, rather than yet another opportunity to do more?
Over the past several years, with a global pandemic followed by global strife in the form of wars and polarized, crumbling governments, the vision of the holidays has felt further and further out of reach. “Peace on earth and goodwill to all” feels not just remote - it feels unattainable. It has made the commercial and capitalist focus of this season feel even more anathema to me. What I hope for most, what the ancient stories highlight, can’t be purchased and wrapped and put under the tree. Lamps that stay lit in miraculous ways, for eight days instead of one. The turning of the seasons and the earth’s reminder to us that darkness and light and the gifts they bring move through our lives in balance year after year. A child born into poverty millennia ago whose life and ministry became a vision of possibility and hope and inclusive love for all that the authorities tried to extinguish. The values and traditions of a marginalized community that found in collective perseverance and ritual much to uplift. Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa. As well as a new year dawning—a chance to look at what has been and chart a vision for what could come next.
How will you celebrate the holiday season this year? What do you most need? Can you focus more on being and presence rather than doing? What will you draw from the ancient stories to inform the story of your living in these tumultuous and complex modern times?
I was reading a meditation by progressive Lutheran minister Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber recently that ended, “So let’s all just try less hard.” I was struck by how my reaction was immediately conflicted. A big feeling of “ Yes! Let’s…please and thank you,” was simultaneously met with a feeling of, “Can we really do that?” I think we can. I know we can, if we try less hard to continually do more and focus instead on being with our loved ones. Perhaps, it’s like saying, try less hard on the things which are ultimately less important, and try instead to be kind and gentle with ourselves and others. Try to sink into the holiday season. Sleep, and eat, and walk, and laugh…bask in the time the holiday season offers without feeling the need to do all the things, or buy all the things, or make all the things. Bring yourself. Be the gift. May 2025 be a year of greater peace and connection, one in which we truly feel goodwill to all. Happy New Year.
Rev. Shana Lynngood serves as Co-Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Victoria. She and her wife and two children have lived as settler/guests in Victoria since 2010. When not deeply engaged with work, Rev. Lynngood is likely to be found reading poetry, listening to music, or walking outside to soak in the beauty of the land and sky and sea and creatures with whom we share this part of the planet.
You can read more articles on our blog, Spiritually Speaking at /blogs/spiritually-speaking
*This article was published in the print edition of the sa国际传媒 on Saturday, January 4th 2025
