4 Ways to Hold On to the Holiday Spirit... All Year Round

What Happens After the Holidays?

By Rona Cherry

For the fortunate —and we wish all of you good fortune beyond measure —the holiday season is the most loving time of year. Our hearts open up to the free flow of kindness, affection, compassion, forgiveness ... all the virtues that ennoble us as a species. If we’re lucky (and we realize that not all people are), we live at year’s end filled with hope, filled with love, filled with power for doing good. We live the way we were intended to live.

Then comes January.

The holiday lights come down. On the street, we walk past dried-out Christmas trees and orphaned strands of tinsel. And when the discarded props of the season disappear from view, our loving, gentle nature so often disappears with them.

But we believe it doesn’t have to be that way. So here are four ways to keep your holiday spirit alive long after the snows have melted, through the dog days of summer, until the leaves begin to turn again, and the loving spirit of the holidays visits our desperately needy world anew year’s end filled with hope, filled with love, filled with power for doing good. We live the way we were intended to live.

Rona Cherry is a writer and interfaith minister, check out her website here!

4. Say a Few Words to Love Itself

Some call it God. Some have no name for it. But if you acknowledge love as something real and true—a changer of lives, a reviver of broken hearts, a force with more ultimate power than all the weapons of the world combined—then daily say a few words to Love itself, no matter the name you know it by. Thank it for the good things you have. Ask it to embed itself in your heart ... and never to leave. Ask it to guide you always in your relationships with those you meet upon your journey. Ask it to give you hope. This, in the end, is what the holidays are all about: Hope. Always seek out hope. Always nurture it. Always keep its flame alive.

You Can Do It!

Some of you, we know, will read this article with a heavy heart—a heart made heavier by the holiday season.

“Who are they kidding?” you may be asking. “Where’s MY holiday spirit supposed to come from?”

To you, we say please don’t ever toss hope aside. Yes, in these uncertain economic times this holiday season may not be your greatest ever. But strive with all your might to leave the door of your heart open—for hope to find its way in.

Give a try to one or two of the above suggestions and hold ever so tight to the hope—the very real hope—that even if the holiday spirit doesn’t happen for you this December, it WILL come. It WILL. It WILL.

And when it does, it will feel that much the sweeter because of your patience, your nobility in hardship, your fortitude through the challenging times.

Happy Holidays.