What does it mean to say you have holiday spirit? It means that you are properly socialized to have empathy and show respect in general to everybody.
Whether celebrating a memorial event that is intended to stimulate a national sense of communal honor and pride or if you are memorializing a religious tradition by participating in festivities that are solemn or social by nature, ultimately, taking a few moments of time to respectfully reflect and honor all varieties of cultural traditions can truly positively inspire.
Birthdays are an easy holiday to explain. Parents, friends, and family members who offer “Happy Birthday” wishes are people who choose to actively celebrate the existence of a person or famous figure they respect, love, care about, and like.
- Thanksgiving is a holiday that helps teach children about community values. It is not about gluttony or food. It was never intended to celebrate the destruction of Native American society and cultural traditions; it is and was a social opportunity to break bread and celebrate the annual success of communities who have succeeded in successfully planning, procuring, and serving a meal large enough to sate a hungry or otherwise tired group.
- Christmas Eve and Christmas day are celebrations intended to promote empathy, not greed. Consumerism only becomes a negative thing when the gifts people buy for others are about conspicuous displays of consumption or are purchased from a sense of obligation rather than with careful and loving thought.
- New Year’s Eve to New Years Day time-sensitive celebrations represent a new dawn — a new year. New Year’s resolutions are symbolic attempts to respectfully honor our collective as well as personal experiences of the past while simultaneously using Law of Attraction thinking to steer ourselves on a path that supports growth in a positive and life-affirming way.
- Easter and Passover celebrations celebrate religious traditions. They are a time of renewal, noting the human connection to global springtime — Mother Earth’s natural systemic and logically ordered cleansing and spirit rising rituals.
- Memorial events like Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day are all tied to movements. Designed to teach children about patriotism while celebrating the success or hard work of predecessors, they are no different than Chinese traditions that are enacted to show respect and the contemporary inclusion of ancestors.
- Halloween was originally a holiday that was supposed to show respect for the dead while offering spiritual protection from scary forces in nature and cultures. Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico show respect; dressing up like a hooker, pimp, terrifying murderer, or slutty pirate shows self-aggrandizement at the expense of all others who choose to see the holiday as an otherwise sacred spiritual event.
- Valentine’s Day is truly supposed to be a quiet time for lovers to exchange an appreciation day of sentiment with one another — not to distribute gifts to narcissistic supply sources or compete for someone’s affection with other romantic rivals.
Jewish holiday traditions are celebrated with a sense of solemn honor. Much like Muslim prayer rituals, their participation oftentimes involves some sort of mindfully dedicated action. As such, traditions, when celebrated together in a group, are the cosmic equivalent of a line dance meant to display a sense of respectfulness, penance, morality, and above all gratitude.
People who fail to understand the true meaning of holiday events or participate actively in the celebration of cultural traditions are not doing anything wrong, per se. However, when then start ranting and raving about why all holidays are bad or do nothing other than waste time and money for all concerned, the social and emotional damage they do to people who do enjoy communal events actually epitomizes narcissistic and anti-social purveyance of “Narcissistic Abuse“.
If you have been victimized by a Grumpy Cat or Grinch on your special day (like a birthday or holiday that matters to you), you are not alone.
It is a tragic reality but people who have narcissistic values — whether natured or nurtured — are notorious for acting like season-wrecking balls while dishing out heaping servings of nearly ritualized and seasonally inspired abuse.
Strategies to avoid being victimized include but are not limited to going gray rock, low contact, or no contact with Flying Monkeys and circus monkey ring leaders. If someone in your home or immediate social sphere insists on being invited to holiday functions, try being busy on the actual day of the memorial or holiday.
Offer to get together with them to celebrate with them on a different evening and encourage them to either stay home alone, take some time off for themselves, or to head out with other similarly tempered friends to do whatever people who lack joy, enthusiasm, or a need to participate in traditional activities in order to feel connected emotionally with other humans.
Why do people try so hard to celebrate holidays and special occasions? They do so to help teach empathy and remind one another how valuable we all are as collective humans. Do not forget that on your next special day.
