Living the Holiday Spirit

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As the end of the year approaches, the holiday season arrives once again. Whether we call it Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Holidays, or simply the turning of the year, this period returns across cultures and countries with remarkable consistency. For some, it is anticipated with joy; for others, endured with quiet tension. It brings warmth and celebration, but also stress, longing, memory, and reflection.

What we often fail to see is that the holidays do not create our experience. They reveal it. They amplify what already lives within us. Joy becomes brighter. Loneliness becomes louder. Old wounds surface, familiar emotions return. The season is not the cause; it is the mirror.

We are taught to believe this time is about shopping, gifts, traditions, food, decorations, and gatherings. But these are only ingredients. Ingredients alone cannot nourish us. Fulfillment comes from the recipe, and the recipe is our inner state. It is how we meet each moment, each person, each experience.

Every one of us passes the same ingredients through different filters: past experiences, fears, expectations, beliefs, and unconscious habits. These filters determine whether the same gathering feels loving or exhausting, whether silence feels peaceful or painful. The holidays slow life down just enough for us to notice this.

It is here where the spiritual invitation lies. If we can take responsibility for our inner posture now, we can do it always. This is not about forcing happiness or denying pain. It is about awareness. About meeting life with presence instead of resistance, gratitude instead of needs, kindness instead of defense. It takes far less energy to soften than to harden, far less effort to love than to protect.

So why reserve this way of being for a season? Why wait for special dates to live consciously, to forgive, to be generous, to be happy, to truly see one another? The recipe does not change throughout the year. Only the ingredients do.

When lived with awareness, every ordinary day carries the same sacred potential as the holidays. Life itself becomes the celebration. The greatest gift you can offer is not something you give, but the way you are. Your presence, attention, and time. And if you choose that wisely, not just in December but every day, your entire life becomes a holiday, an act of gratitude.

If you need a holiday to remember how to be human, how to be happy, how to be kind, grateful, forgiving, then the problem is not the calendar.

Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever you celebrate!

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Author: Maurice "Mao" Correa
Website: pathtoone.com
Blog for Articles: pathtooneblog.blogspot.com

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