Spreading Holiday Cheer

It's the most wonderful time of the year...right? ;-) For most people it is. Shopping, parties, champagne, wrapping and decorating to our hearts content! Traditions, new and old. I'll be the first to admit I'm terrible at keeping traditions. I always have the best intentions and start out overly ambitious. After repeating traditions a few times, though, I start to crave change and lose motivation. Anyways, I do have a couple new Christmas traditions out here in Grayland that I'll do my best to continue for as many years as possible! One is a holiday happy hour at my house with friends. This was my second year hosting and it was a lot of fun! We did an ornament exchange this year which I'll try to make live on. The most exciting new tradition I started was baking cookies and sending cookie boxes to our kids! I had so much fun picking out the 5 different kinds of cookies I was going to make and even more fun making a huge mess in the kitchen over the course of 2 days baking, shaping and packing up the cookie tins to mail off. I really hope I keep this one going! Wish me luck!

Christmas is such a strange time in the world. It brings out the best in people, but also can bring out the worst in them as well. My sister helped me raise my daughter and every year we would go Christmas shopping together. We always made a day of it, spending too much money, lunch breaks at one of our favorite eateries and crossing things off our list. As happy and goofy as we would be it always surprised us how many people we were surrounded by that were rude, mean, rushed, angry and pushy. Boundaries, people! At first we were reacting impulsively to these interactions and sometimes even letting them ruin our day. My sister decided one day, though, that we weren't going to let these people cloak us with their negative energy. And maybe we could even turn their day around. From that moment on if we encountered grumpy people we would just smile and say "Merry Christmas" with all the joy we could manage to pull from our hearts. Some people didn't notice, some people were disgusted with us but honestly a lot of people stopped in their tracks, smiled back and wished us a merry Christmas back! No matter their reaction we got a big kick out of it. We laughed a lot and it helped keep our hearts light amongst the tidal waves of anti-holiday energy. It wasn't that we weren't aware that some of these people were stressed by the daunting expectations the holidays bring. Trust me, I get how difficult these times are for a lot of people. It was just our way of combatting our experience with the holiday bustle. I still find myself doing this even now, but usually just to myself. It still makes me smile. It also reminds me of how my sister can turn any situation into a positive one. One of my favorite lines she says often to me is, "it'll be a good story tomorrow". She has always had a way of reminding me to breathe and live in the moment. It was a difficult lesson for me because I am the person who constantly worries about ALL the what-ifs. To a fault, like I sometimes make myself physically sick worrying about them. So I've always appreciated her taking the time to help me work through this without being condescending. I'm sure her love for life rubbed off on my daughter as well. She is an ambassador of living in the moment and reminds the people around her to do the same. It's an incredibly unique characteristic that makes me very proud of her.

If this is your favorite time of year I am so happy your time is here! If you're struggling, please reach out to a friend. I know it's hard. I also know people are more receptive than we can ever imagine. Our friends want us to share our feelings with them. The good ones and the ugly ones. We all know life isn't the fairy tale we portray on social media. We are all just doing our best to get through each second of each day. So if your best isn't enough I encourage you to lean on someone for the boost you need. If I am that person for you my phone is always on. I'm literally like a teenager, my phone is attached to me at all times. Holidays can be a time where we're surrounded by people who love and care about us, if we let those people in. Trust me, they want you to invite them in so they can be there for you. You are not alone.