Hey guys, welcome back to the Soul aligned Self-Care Podcast.
I'm excited for today's episode.
Today's episode is a solo episode,
but I am talking all about the holidays,
which seems to be on a lot of people's minds,
at least in my circles,
because everybody's kind of tired of the,
you know, consumerism and the greeniness
of the billionaires in the corporations
and so everyone's trying to be more mindful.
I shouldn't say everyone.
I said a lot of people are trying to be more mindful
of this holiday season
and where they purchased gifts from
using small businesses more than anybody else
and there's even some people protesting
the big corporations myself included.
And so as you know,
I kind of have an interesting way
of celebrating the holidays.
I don't, I feel like it was like in 2020
when our family decided
it wasn't going to be a thing
where we forced everybody to get together on that one day
where we would vow to get together
and every year get together
and we do that and we manage to do that,
but it's not always at the holiday time.
So I just play it by year.
Sometimes I celebrate, sometimes I don't,
I don't do the big buying gifts
for everyone kind of a thing.
I make things all year round.
I can, I grow garlic and so I make,
I make my own skin care, you guys know that.
And so a lot of the gifts that I give
are just things that I make
and I really believe that's the way to go,
but that's, you know, that's my belief.
Everybody has different beliefs.
I also don't have small children,
so I'm not in that realm of the pressure that you have
to maybe buy certain things or do certain things,
but I do think there's a good and a bad way
to do the holidays.
And I'm just gonna throw my two cents in.
And one of the things I do wanna make clear
is that you are allowed to redefine
and redesign your holidays so that they work for you,
the way you wanna experience them
without experiencing massive amounts of stress.
You can do this.
It seems like every year as soon as Halloween ends,
sometimes even before Halloween ends,
everybody collectively like loses their mind
and you're blasted with just ads and music
and emails and oh my God, it's so annoying.
I almost wish I could just block everything sometimes.
And then they tell you that it's supposed
to be the most magical time of the year.
Well, you can experience this, you can.
But for some people I have to say it's not always magical.
Some people don't get along with their families.
Some don't have anybody to spend the holidays with.
Some people are grieving, some are exhausted,
some dread the travel, the pressure, the cost,
the expectations, and some just don't vibe
with the whole thing at all.
Some people just don't wanna celebrate the holidays
and they don't.
But here's the truth, no one says it out loud.
You're allowed to redefine your holidays for you.
You're not obligated to follow society's rules,
especially when those rules feel more like unpaid labor
mixed with consumerism and a dash of guilt, right?
So this season can be whatever you want it to be
and I really do mean that.
Now, the more people that you're spending the holidays with,
like say you have three children and a partner
and then you have family that live close by
and there's a lot of pressure,
it could be harder to like redesign your holiday.
I'm gonna full on admit that, but it is not impossible
because you can have complete creative control, okay?
Any kind of tradition that you have
or just habits that somebody invented a long time ago,
probably a man.
But usually in a time when women were doing all the work
in society's current version of the holiday,
let's be honest, it's become like a billionaire
enrichment festival disguised as a family bonding, right?
So let's toss that script and start over.
You get to decide what the holidays mean to you
and sometimes a lot of us haven't even done that.
We haven't even sat down and asked ourselves,
what do we want it to look like?
We just complain about it, right?
Some people love it, right?
Some people are a hundred percent in
but I would have to say the majority of people are not.
You get to choose how you spend your time,
you get to define what feels good,
what feels nourishing, peaceful and joyful,
no rules, no sheds, no mandatory performances.
You get to create new rituals for yourself and your family.
Of course you do have to work with your family.
I'm not saying you call all the shots
and that's the end of all of everything, right?
So you are working with other people here.
But why does reinventing help,
especially as your life changes?
So your life shifts and your relationship shifts.
So your needs shift as you move through life.
Everybody's doing, right?
So why shouldn't your tradition shift also?
When I went through my divorce,
I reinvented my holiday.
It wasn't really, I didn't think it was good or helpful
to pretend that everything was the same.
We moved into a new house, we had a new rhythm
and definitely a new reality.
It was very different from the old reality.
So I created new traditions for me and my kids.
Small things, cozy things, things that made the season
feel like ours instead of a reminder
of what we had changed or what we had lost, right?
And these traditions like live on today.
So one of the funniest ones was when I got divorced,
I ended up moving into my house,
like right around Christmas time, to the point
where everything was still in boxes.
And I couldn't do the big Christmas dinner.
I mean, maybe I could have pushed it,
but I wasn't gonna push myself.
I was exhausted, right?
And so it was Christmas Eve, normally on Christmas Eve,
there's a big dinner in my family,
a big Italian family.
We would have a big dinner, usually pasta,
like lasagna, a big city, that kind of thing.
And it was a big deal, it was a big thing.
And I was like, I can't do this.
And so we ordered Chinese food
and we ate Chinese food on paper plates
and that became part of our tradition.
To this day, we have Chinese food on Christmas Eve
and it's amazing.
It takes so much pressure off.
Everybody loves Chinese food.
And you know what?
It's part of our tradition
and you have a big dinner usually on Christmas day.
So why do that two days in a row?
I don't know.
The Italians are crazy when it comes to cooking.
So that was part of a tradition.
Now another really funny tradition is,
I started this thing where on Christmas Eve,
'cause I always got my kids pajamas,
including myself also for Christmas Eve.
And so on Christmas Eve, I started a tradition
where an elf would come to the door
and drop off new pajamas for all of us to wear on Christmas Eve.
And so, you know, I had to get someone
to come to the door, ring the doorbell
and leave this wrapped gift of Christmas pajamas
right on the stoop.
And it happened every year.
As my kids got older,
so there's a big age difference
between my oldest child and my middle child,
like six, seven years.
And so this year, my oldest was going to be the elf,
dropping off 'cause she knew about the elf at this point.
She was a teenager.
And then my youngest was, I mean, my middle child,
he was getting to be at that age where, you know,
he was questioning things.
And so he was like, I'm gonna chase after the elf this year
and catch the elf and see who is the elf.
Like, so he was questioning this.
And so he was just waiting for it.
And then when she came and ring that doorbell,
he flew out the door and chased her all through the neighborhood.
It was so freakin' funny.
And that was the last year my daughter was like,
I'm not doing this anymore.
(laughs)
But we still do this to this day.
And when my oldest daughter, you know, when my kids were grown
and we all kind of ended up in our, you know,
different places that were far away from each other.
And my oldest daughter was away from home
and we couldn't spend Christmas together one year.
One of her friends reached out and said,
what can I do to make her feel comfortable at Christmas times
and she can't be around her family this year?
And I told him about the tradition
of the Chinese food and the pajamas.
And so all her friends got together.
They had like a pajama party
and had Chinese food with her.
And I just thought that was the sweetest thing ever.
And they still do it to this day.
It's just like a thing that they do.
They get together, have Chinese food.
They have a little gift giving thing that they do with each other
and they come in their pajamas and come be close.
And I just absolutely love that this tradition
has kind of like morphed its way
into like a big friend Christmas, you know?
So it's just really kind of cool.
Now that my kids are grown,
I've kind of reinvented the holidays again.
So I don't do the marathon shopping,
the stress, you know, all the stressful things.
I got to the point where, you know, my kids,
all three of my kids worked in the service industry
or still do at some point in time.
And you have to work a lot around the holidays, right?
It's busy.
And so trying to get everybody together on the holidays
was so stressful and I felt horrible putting that pressure
on my kids.
I really, it just didn't feel right.
It didn't feel like that was a holiday thing to do.
And so we just changed the way we did things.
And we get together many times a year.
If we get together on a holiday, sometimes we do,
that's fantastic.
If not, it's not a big deal, okay?
I don't travel just because a calendar says
that I should travel and I don't make them do that either.
I know that no matter what,
I'm going to get together with all of my kids
we're all gonna get together at some point.
And I can give my kids presence any time of the year.
So I acknowledge the season.
I love it.
I enjoy parts that are feel so nostalgic
because my mother was a holiday freak.
She loved every holiday and she went over the top
for every holiday.
So some of the things, some of those,
those really fun rituals that we had, I still do.
And I skipped the parts that feel forced or draining,
like the travel and the forced hangout on that one day
a year when everybody's trying to travel
and hang out on that same day.
Honestly, it's liberating.
I remember the first hint that this was changing
and shifting was, it was one of my kids, excuse me,
let me just take a drink here.
It was one of my kids were younger
and we all got like a stomach bud around Christmas
and then Christmas was kind of canceled.
So we didn't spend time with family or anything like that.
We hung out in our pajamas all day and just watched TV.
And it turned out to be like a really good Christmas
for all of us.
We all enjoyed the fact that we didn't have to travel.
I was always the one that had to travel
'cause my mom and dad and my brother lived somewhere
and I lived further away.
So I was always the one that came to them
even though I was like the single mom with three kids.
I don't know why, I was always the one that traveled
and it was exhausting for all of us.
And I think the kids kind of like enjoyed it,
not having to do it, just being at home,
they like being at home.
So that was the first sign that, you know,
the regular way we celebrated Christmas
was not completely aligned.
So you're allowed to do that.
You're every year if you want.
You could change the way you celebrate holidays.
There's absolutely no rules.
If you're not religious too and, you know,
I mean, why would you put yourself
through all the stress, right?
Do the things that really feel aligned and fun to you.
And if that's everything, then that's everything.
So like I said earlier, you really have to ask yourself
what you really want.
So if you stripped away the guilt, the pressure,
the traditions that don't fit anymore
and the expectations from family,
we know how heavy those are, what would you choose?
So think about it.
So do you want to spend the holidays with your family
or would you rather spend time with friends?
Or even solo?
Do you crave like a quiet celebration?
Would you rather travel somewhere warm
than freeze your way through December?
Do you want to volunteer?
Help others or spend the season in service?
Do you want to make gifts instead of buying them?
Do you want to treat the holiday as a season
rather than a single day?
Do you want to skip it entirely
and treat it like a regular day?
I've done that.
It's kind of cool.
Nothing's off the table.
And you don't need a reason to choose differently.
You don't have to like make it an excuse for it.
You know, there's so many beautiful ways
to redesign the season.
And here is some ideas to spark your imagination,
just in case you're like, I don't know what I want.
So you can kind of focus on like connection and community,
which I think is really important at Christmas.
You could host like a low-key, low-pressure
potluck with friends, like what my daughters friends did.
You could have a cozy craft night
where everybody comes and you do like crafts together
and you could even make them as gifts.
You could start a new tradition with like your chosen family
instead of your biological family.
That's for all the people out there
who don't get along with their family.
You can create like a warm drink night,
like tea, hot cocoa and conversation.
There's so many different settings that you can create.
You could just spend the holidays by yourself
or maybe you are by yourself.
So what do you want to do?
You could take yourself on a personal retreat.
You could book a cabin or go to the beach.
You could have a movie and favorite food marathon at home.
You could use the day for rest, reflection or absolutely nothing.
So one of the things that I'm doing for Thanksgiving,
first of all, I think Thanksgiving is kind of a horrible holiday.
So I've decided to redesign it.
I don't think we should celebrate like us coming to this country
and decimating in a population of the locals.
But if you think of it as a day to be grateful,
then that's a beautiful way to do it.
But Thanksgiving's never been like terribly important to me,
but I do like the food.
I like the sides.
So because I'm in the middle of moving, I'm packing.
And this week is my packing week.
This is the week where I'm hunkering down
and getting it most of it done.
'Cause I have a little travel.
I have to do it at the beginning of December
and then I'm moving, right?
So I'm getting my packing done this week.
And so Thanksgiving day, I am packing
and I'm going to watch, I like watching the parade.
I like watching the dog show.
And obviously I'm gonna make food, right?
And that's it.
I'm gonna be by myself.
I mean, I might hang out with my dad a little bit,
but I'm not doing the big Thanksgiving dinner
and I don't miss it.
Now, if I happen to be living near my daughter,
which is where I'm moving,
and they're having a Thanksgiving celebration,
I'm gonna go 'cause I wanna be with family
and I wanna be with friends, right?
So I'm gonna go.
So it's not that I'm against celebrating the holidays.
It's that I'm gonna do what feels aligned at that moment.
And this week my alignment is with packing
and getting myself ready for my move.
You can create, like do like a creative or a handmade holiday,
which I think a lot of people are doing this year.
You could paint, do crafts, bake,
make skin care, preserve foods, jams, create art,
write letters instead of buying gifts, support local artists
and makers instead of big corporations, right?
We talked about that a little bit at the beginning.
I think this is, I think you should do that
every holiday season.
So my alternative things that you could do is
you could celebrate before or after
the actual holiday with family
so that the travel isn't as stressful.
You could treat December as a season, not a single day,
so that you could spend, like,
you can do holiday celebrations with a lot of people
instead of trying to get together
with every single person on one day.
I think there's a movie about that, right?
For Christmas's or something like that.
There's a couple movies about that,
like going to like five different houses on Christmas.
You could redefine tradition as whatever feels good
for you this year, just like I did after my divorce.
You could just create new traditions
that align with what you wanna create.
You could have small gatherings instead of one high pressure event,
like I talked about, you know, like,
you have, say, you're married, you have a partner.
So you have their family, you have your family,
you have your friends, you have all these different groups.
So why not just have different celebrations on different day
instead of trying to force everything in one day?
Excuse me.
And you could decide that the holidays is about giving back,
so you could volunteer with a local shelter
or community kitchen, you could sponsor a family,
you could make like, care kits for people who are homeless,
you could donate time or skills instead of buying gifts.
You could travel, you could use it to travel.
I was just watching a movie,
I think it's the four Christmas's movie, right?
Where they usually travel and they,
I think they lie to their family
and tell them that they're doing like volunteer work
in all these different countries
and they get busted or something like that.
But legitimately you could travel, you could spend the holidays
somewhere warm and bright, you can go somewhere snowy
and go skiing and you could take a spontaneous trip
just because you can, right?
You have that time off, why not take a trip?
Now for parents, I know this,
it's different to redesign your holiday
when you have children
because there's a lot of expectations and pressure
and I understand that.
So thinking about creating meaningful experiences
instead of a mounting of presence.
So how can you start to make that shift for your kids,
especially if they're little
and you haven't been,
you haven't had a lot of Christmases with them yet?
You know, you could,
you can make those changes now.
You could bake cookies, watch movies, do crafts,
decorate together, teach kids about community
and giving and creativity and have fun with it.
Or you don't have to celebrate it all.
If you're not religious
or you're not into the holiday, you could just skip it.
I remember one year I went for a run on Christmas day
and it was so quiet, it was eerie
and I absolutely loved it
because no one really goes for a run on Christmas day
but it was fantastic.
So when you're kind of moving in a different direction
as like a large percentage of the population,
it feels very peaceful sometimes.
You could treat it as a normal day with extra snacks
and you could clean, you could organize,
you could do a reset, you could dive into like a passion project.
So let me tell you, I've done a lot of these things
that I'm listing here and it is so freeing
to let go of the haftos and the shoes.
So there's no wrong answer here.
This can change every single year.
Maybe this year is quiet, maybe next year is festive.
Maybe some years feels joyful and some years,
it feels a little tender.
Maybe you reinvent it again when your family shifts,
when your kids grow up or when life changes.
Holidays should bend to your life,
not the other way around.
The holidays don't have to be stressful or lonely
or expensive or you don't have to have all these obligations.
They can be simple, they can be joyful,
they can be cozy and they can be peaceful.
They can be whatever you decide they are.
You're allowed to reclaim your time,
reclaim your holiday,
you're allowed to rewrite the script
and you're allowed to create a holiday season
that nourishes you and doesn't drain the fuck out of you.
So if you could change one thing this year,
what would it be?
Share it with me on my socials,
if you could find me or over on my Patreon,
where you could follow me for free.
That's what's cool about Patreon now.
You could follow me, you could follow anyone for free
and it's nice because you're not on social media
and I get all the ads and stuff like that.
You just see the stuff from the people that you follow.
So I would encourage you to check that out.
This is not like an ad for Patreon,
I don't really make out on this,
but what I like about it is I don't follow a lot
of people on Patreon but I follow a few
and that's the only stuff I say.
I'm not seeing all these ads and stuff like that.
So it's kind of cool.
So you can visit me there,
but definitely share with me what you're gonna change.
I love hearing other people's traditions too
because some of them are really cookie
like the Chinese food and pajama thing that we do
and some of them are super traditional.
I love to hear all the different things
and get some new ideas of things I might wanna try in the future.
Okay guys, that is it for today.
I hope that you have so much fun redesigning
and redefining your holiday season.
I will see you next week.
