Christmas: The Reason for the Season

I love Christmas! It’s more than just the date of December 25th. It’s a whole season. More than that, it’s a feeling. It’s the feeling of unconditional love and joy we get when we surround ourselves with loved ones and celebrate the infinite wonder and promise of a tiny newborn baby born almost 2,025 years ago in a humble manger in Bethlehem. 

The Magical Christmas Feeling

The best description of that Christmas feeling I’ve ever heard goes like this:

“You know something, sweetheart? Christmas is... well, it's about the best time of the whole year. When you walk down the streets, even for weeks before Christmas comes, and there's lights hanging up, green ones and red ones, sometimes there's snow and everyone's hustling some place. But they don't hustle around Christmastime like they usually do. You know, they're a little more friendlier... they bump into you, they laugh and they say, ‘Pardon me. Merry Christmas’... especially when it gets real close to Christmas night. Everybody's walking home, you can hardly hear a sound. Bells are ringin', kids are singing, the snow is coming down. And boy what a pleasure it is to think that you've got some place to go to. And that the place that you're going to, there's somebody in it that you really love. Someone you're nuts about. Merry Christmas.”

“The Honeymooners” Marathon

As a Brooklyn-born girl whose father drove a newspaper truck for a living, I find it particularly heartwarming that the wise man who described Christmas so fittingly was none other than the sometimes bumbling but always good-hearted bus driver from Brooklyn, Ralph Kramden. For anyone unfamiliar with Ralph Kramden, that was the name of one of the main characters in a television show called “The Honeymooners” that aired originally from 1955 to 1956 and became a classic that can still be seen in reruns. Ralph Kramden was portrayed by the genius actor and comedian Jackie Gleason, who was also a Brooklyn native. 

In the New York area every year, a “Honeymooners” marathon, featuring all the episodes from the original series, runs on a local television network from 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve to 4 a.m. on New Year’s Day. It’s become a tradition for our family to watch the marathon, at least until we see the episode where Ralph gives his “Christmas is… “ speech. The thirteenth episode of the show, it was called ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and it first aired on Christmas Eve 1955. Ralph Kramden’s message about Christmas is as true today as when Jackie Gleason gave voice to Ralph’s

words all those years ago. I remember watching reruns of this “Honeymooners” episode with my parents, and now my husband and I watch it with our sons and savor the special Christmas season feeling of being home with those we really love.

My Keystone for Self-Empowered Success

Christmas is the perfect time to start implementing my three-pronged keystone for self-empowered success: connect define pivot℠. Or, if you’ve already implemented the keystone in your life, the Christmas season is the perfect time to expand and optimize your practice of it. 

The keystone recognizes the importance of body, mind, and spirit in a success lifestyle. Using the keystone, you train and allow yourself to be successful. It’s a matter of thinking, speaking, interacting, conversing, acting or not acting, reacting or not reacting in a way that allows the outcomes you favor or desire - or even greater and more desirable things and experiences - to flow easily to you.

The three prongs, or keys, of the keystone are: connecting with your Creator and positive energy; defining who you are and what you want/what feels good to you; pivoting to a better position. 

There is no right order to the keys, and they can be implemented at the same time or separately, depending on your needs and preferences at any given moment or phase of your life.

When I use the keystone in my own life, I succeed. And when I don’t, the success I am looking for stays out of reach until I pivot to renew my focus on connecting and defining.

The Connect Key

The connect key is about nurturing and nourishing yourself in body, mind, and spirit by connecting with your Creator and positive energy. This Christmas, consciously and purposely focus on and connect to your true nature. We are all made in the likeness of our Creator who is unconditional love, the purest of positive energy, and the source of all that is good. 

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Son of Love, the wondrous newborn baby whose humble entry into our world over two thousand years ago carried with it infinite promise. His birth made us all children of that same unconditional Love, with unlimited potential. Nurture yourself this Christmas season. Start with self-love and self-care. Embrace your true nature as a free, independent, exceptional being, with your own talents, strengths, and preferences. Surround yourself with those you love and share your birthright of joy. 

The Define Key

The define key is where you get more specific about who YOU are. It’s your journey of becoming ever more authentically YOU every day. You connect to your true nature with the connect key, and with the define key you identify what makes you unique and exceptional, and what feels good to you/what your preferences are. You keep defining and refining as you go and grow on your life’s path, and as you succeed your success brings you more and more and more desires, preferences, and favorable outcomes.

Always be your authentic self.

This Christmas, define what you love and do Christmas your way. Participate in your favorite traditions, or start a new tradition to share with those you love. In our family, it’s become a tradition that the Christmas season starts the day after Thanksgiving and goes through what we know as “Little Christmas” (or the Feast of the Three Kings) on January 6. We go to all the local Christmas fairs, as much to find special gifts as to share the joy of the Christmas season with our neighbors and friends. Even though our two sons are now grown, we still do the Elf on a Shelf. I think my husband enjoys the search for the elf the most! And a few years ago, I started a tradition of spray-painting the pumpkins from our Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations red, green, silver, and gold and making them Christmas ornaments to go along with our Christmas light display. It’s a great way to carry the gratitude we express at Thanksgiving through the Christmas celebration of unconditional Love, and into the New Year.

The Pivot Key

The pivot key involves releasing anything that does not serve you and renewing your focus on your true nature, who you are and what you want/what feels good to you. When you encounter an obstacle, appreciate it because it helps you realize that you don’t want the negative feelings you associate with it, and it presents an opportunity for you to pivot to a better position by focusing on what you do want/what feels good to you. The more you focus on the positive and project positivity outward, the more you attract success.

I’ve pivoted many times in my success journey, changing my focus from negativity and lack to positivity and abundance. Doing so allowed me to be the valedictorian of my college class, a good caretaker for my mother through her illness and depression after my father died (even as I was working through my own grief at losing my father when I was 22), a successful female corporate executive, and a loving wife and mother. My latest pivot was walking away from the corporate world and starting my success coaching business. I’m doing what I love and helping others. 

That first Christmas, Mary and Joseph didn’t let the lack of room at the inn get them down. They pivoted. The Son of Love was born in a humble manger. The brightest star in the heavens shone above, a chorus of angels sang, shepherds watching their sheep in the fields came to adore the newborn king, three wise men came from afar to gift the babe, the barn animals gathered round to keep the holy family warm, and a little drummer boy played. In the words of writer and scholar C. S. Lewis, author of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” and other

works, “once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.”

Let the infinite feeling of unconditional love and joy warm your heart and soul this Christmas season. Connect define pivot.