How Holiday Cheer is Different Than Cheerfulness

Knowing the difference is crucial to giving ourselves some holiday grace.  

Be a little silly with me, and take a moment to imagine an extremely cheerful person.  If we define cheerful as a personality trait or disposition, it feels showy and one-dimensional.  Maybe even insincere.  What if we instead define cheerful as a reaction?  Cheerful would then require an outside experience, to which we react positively and optimistically.  But doesn’t that mean cheerfulness is short-lived and completely reliant upon an outside source?   Both definitions of cheerful seem pretty fakey.  

But yet as we step into the holiday season our desire for cheerfulness really does rise. And if we don’t feel cheerful, we question ourselves.  And if our loved ones don’t look cheerful, we question them.  

Perhaps there is a difference between being cheerful and being filled with holiday cheer.  To me, holiday cheer conjures images of warmth.  It feels deeper, more slow burning. I imagine seeing it in someone’s eyes rather than on their smiley face. 

And maybe we don’t become filled with holiday cheer by doing cheerful things, but by finding the warmth that is already within us, and allowing that warmth to emerge.  

So as the holiday season pulls and tugs at us to create cheerful situations for ourselves and our loved ones, we might need to step back and rethink.  If an experience makes us cheerful for a bit, yeah!  But if it doesn’t, it's perfectly OK because that’s not the long-lived stuff anyways.  The deeper warmth of holiday cheer isn’t found, it’s something that already lives within us. 

We are not really filled with holiday spirit.  The spirit is always and forever alive in you, because you are alive and part of the Big Spirit.

Until next time,

Laura