Holidays: Connection Through Ritual
I believe holidays are meant to draw us closer to our Higher Power and one another. As we anticipate and reflect on the holidays, it’s important to acknowledge the invisible and make it visible. The rituals that we all have help with this. Rituals contain intention, connection, awareness, and symbolism. They help us maintain social ties. The ritual of giving gifts on holidays or birthdays isn’t just about the presents; it’s a symbol of love, of belonging. Eating turkey on Thanksgiving isn’t just a shared meal; it’s an expression of gratitude and of maintaining social bonds. Rituals can connect us to the past and provide stability for the future.
The challenge that most women face now is keeping rituals, meant to connect us, alive and meaningful. It can be easy to lose awareness of connection or our deep intention to maintain positive social ties with the business of the holiday season. Some women enter the holidays wanting them to be meaningful only to find that it feels chaotic, frazzled, and stressful. Others find it easy to keep the magic alive. They are happy and jolly to be gathering with loved ones. And still others struggle. They have a different experience of the holidays. They feel fine but dread getting together with family. There is too much family drama and conflict. Maybe there have been major losses. Losses that the holidays only serve to pour alcohol on wounds of regret, longing, loss, guilt, and sadness. Sometimes the holidays exacerbate chronic struggles with mental health.
In an effort to cope, many women put on a false front to impress others or prove to others and themselves that they are just fine. That those past losses, regrets, doubts of not doing or being enough are just the past and should have no bearing on the present. Maybe that perspective has carried them through one holiday season. Maybe ten holiday seasons. The number of holidays that come and go isn’t the issue. They keep the actions and responsibilities going but have lost the rituals. When the fire of the holiday season to connect becomes secondary to getting by or just coping, connection is lost. Even if the connection is to memories of pain and struggle. The awareness of our connection to our Higher Power, ourselves, and those we care about teeters. Perhaps adjusting rituals can help us bring about our true intention, to reconnect. Even if the reconnection is painful.
To have deep meaning, honesty about what has allowed disconnection to occur must be allowed. You don’t have to sing it out loud. But deep in your own recesses, that truth must be acknowledged. What is it you keep yourself from having or acknowledging during this holiday season? Easy connection with others? Holding onto grudges? Accepting that you are struggling with grief or depression? Acknowledging to yourself, honestly, what you have disconnected from will bring back your awareness. Then you can rekindle your intention and bring forth connection.
Adjustments to existing rituals can accommodate this acknowledgment. Perhaps the ritual of you wrapping every gift can be adjusted to sharing that task. Perhaps the family member’s name who is never mentioned can be acknowledged, even if in a general holiday prayer. Perhaps the depth of unresolved grief or depression can be ok by placing an ornament on the Christmas tree that appropriately acknowledges that which is difficult to embrace.
The intentions and awareness of these ritual adjustments will bring the connection. It will stir your affection to the intangible meaning of the Holiday that we all desire…and deserve.
Where are you with the holidays? Are you excited? Perhaps overwhelmed? Perhaps sad and grieving? Perhaps anxious to have the “perfect” holiday? Or perhaps a mix of everything? Where is your connection to your Higher Power and to your loved ones? How are your rituals doing?
Regardless of where you are at, it is important to honor and respect that others’ feelings and responses to the holidays may differ than yours. It is equally important to respect your feelings and responses about the holidays. We have all had varied experiences, especially, when it comes to the holidays.
We all look at the holidays differently. Some enjoy the hustle and bustle while others may avoid it. Some may be happy to gather with others while others experience gathering as painful memories. Still, some see the holidays as a time for quiet spiritual reflection and may choose to travel during the holidays for solace or to remain in quiet solitude.
It is the rituals and their symbols that give us focus and intentionality. Symbols such as lighting candles, eating a particular meal, singing holiday songs, buying and giving gifts, and attending services, all serve to connect. Perhaps most of all, they help us in our search for meaning, our search to understand where we come from and who we are.
Blessings,
Dr. Martha Spano