Adapted from: Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, & Young Adults to Win in Life
As the holiday season approaches, there’s anticipation in the air. Weeks ahead, you can feel the tension already building up in supermarkets, at airports, and with making travel plans to visit family and friends. Halloween decorations sold in stores are supplanted with those for Thanksgiving and then for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. It seems that they are displayed earlier and earlier each year, mostly for commercial purposes and retail sales. With all the hustle and bustle, holidays may lose their intended meaning of enjoyment, of sharing, of love, and of reaching out to those who are less fortunate.
There are many stressors that we face at crowded airports with expensive flights that are cancelled and lost suitcases, and you cannot seem to find your way clear to get to your destination. During holiday travel you may find yourselves on expressways that seem to go nowhere with backup traffic for miles.
We seem to forget that many people find it harder to manage depression and anxiety during the hectic holidays. There are more heart attacks on December 25th than any other day of the year from too much stress, too much alcohol, and too much rich and salty foods. Since COVID-19, the rate of younger persons having heart attacks climbed significantly. Personally, I know a colleague whose husband, 36, died from a cardiac arrest on Christmas Eve while decorating the tree with his family.
During the holidays we tend to become nostalgic and think about times in the past and the family traditions of setting up the Christmas tree or taking out the Menorah and lighting the candles each night for Hanukkah. We may also miss those family members who have since passed away and may get depressed. I often get misty eyed and sad when unpacking ornaments that remind me of lost loved ones. This year I lost my beautiful sister to dementia, and my brother-in-law to strokes. I am feeling their absence until I hear her soprano voice sing in spirit Ave Maria, accompanied by her husband, a pianist.
In the midst of experiencing high stress and sadness, sometimes I wanted to set aside the entire holiday tradition and forget it all, until I recalled the most memorable Christmases of my childhood, where the gift of giving continues to this day, such as in the following narrative.
My Dad: The Merry Mailman
My father had two jobs to support our family of five children. He worked hard as a letter carrier at our hometown post office during the Holiday Season and used his tips and overtime money to purchase our family gifts. His postal bag carried on his shoulder was heavy, which weighed him down, and his nose frequently had ice cycles forming on it when it snowed. Having no reindeer to help him, he walked on foot to deliver the holiday mail in our community. Everyone knew him, and he knew everyone on his route. After he completed this job, he went on to work at his PAL center as director until 10 pm daily.
On Christmas Eve one year, my dad, feeling compassion for those in lower income brackets in our neighborhood fixed up a used bicycle we had stored in the basement. Unbeknown to me, he and my sister placed the bike and other wrapped gifts on the front porch at the home of a poor family with 13 children—one of whom was my friend–rang the doorbell, and then hid in the nearby bushes to see the reaction they had when opening the door. Since many of my gifts requested from Santa were given away, my parents hustled to replace them before the stores closed. When I awoke on Christmas morning, filled with anticipation, I found my gifts in the usual place between the dining room and living room, and soon afterwards realized that Santa delivered the wrong package down our chimney because the gifts received were not on my list. At first, I was disappointed, but accepted the replacements after hearing of my dad’s gifts of love to my friend’s family who opened them with delight.
Four Ways the Gift Can Keep on Giving
As I look back to this narrated Christmas in my past when my father gave away my gifts to others, I now realize that he delivered the spirit of the holiday in his mailbag to me and taught the meaning of it through his actions. Until now, I had not thought about how we, as a family, never saw ourselves as being without, or having food scarcity, or being poor because there were always those who had less. As an adult this meaning of the holidays held by my parents taught me how to think myself rich, how to increase abundance, and how be wealthy that I can share with others, so the gift keeps on giving.
As a peak performance coach and RN, I now know that it is not the holiday stressors that make us ill, unhappy, stressed out, cause heart attacks, or feel exhausted. It is how we respond effectively to them that makes the difference in the following areas by giving of yourself:
- Self-Care
- Thinking yourself strong
- Laughing out loud
- Being your own best friend
- Letting go
- Finding what gives true joy
- Selflessness
- Telling someone you love them and why
- Being magnanimous
- Reaching our on FaceTime or Zoom to say hello
- Being kind to a stranger
- Loving neighbors as you love yourself
- Beyond Self
- Asking a friend how they are doing at a new job
- Sending a care package and meal to those homebound
- Putting the infirmed first before our own needs
- Donating to a place of worship in a low-income area
- Volunteering at a food bank or homeless shelter
- Self-Motivation
- Practicing new methods to handle stress for the New Year
- Limiting alcohol and drugs
- Having prosperity consciousness
- Writing down plans of action to achieve goals
- Using a feedback loop to monitor progress