Dr Bill Price was asked by Father Christmas to represent him for the day. It got him thinking about the Christmas Season and the way we celebrate it, or don’t.
How are you celebrating Christmas this year? Perhaps you’re by yourself. No decorations, no tinsel, no lights, no tree… Perhaps you feel it’s all too much trouble. You are not with family, you’re not sending or receiving gifts, so many nots.
Are we officially beyond Christmas now? Do the traditional festivities we grew up with no longer matter? Our eyes no longer flutter in the twinkling lights as our ears try and ignore the back to back holiday songs on the radio. Do we try and avoid carols by candlelight? Have things we used to get excited about now lost their appeal?
Is Christmas just a ploy to get us to buy presents. Or go to church services. We know there is no Father Christmas. It’s just a tradition for those who want it.
Christ could never have been born in December anyway. Shepherds don’t watch their flocks in the snow. Seems the date was man made. Conjured up. Maybe he was born in August or a September. Goodbye tradition!
Yet, CS Lewis wrote… “Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.”
When I consider that, hope comes alive again, beyond the year we just lived through. Beyond all the challenges and festive misgivings. Beyond any grumpy feelings or long lost desires.
Will you stand in for Father Christmas?
When you consider the delight the festive season brings to children, you realise it’s not so hard to stand in for Father Christmas and bring some cheer to others.
By the time the holidays come, we’ve worked so hard to get to the place where we can finally take a break. After a year of hard work, effort, energy, deployed passion, dedicated service to others, it’s time to celebrate…
And so, once again, we start to trust and believe. We consider how things could be better. This may start off as a vague idea that things could somehow be different, then comes clarity as to what the future looks like. And so we begin to dream again, to think and consider… as we drink mulled wine and eat party food and dance because we can.
We prepare for a day with the family. We look around as we sip our drinks and enjoy all the delicious treats. We are thankful, hopeful, wondering, pondering, trusting and it’s all OK.
It’s what we do. It’s who we are. Yet our lives are all the richer when we allow them to be interrupted with the true story of Christmas. We test to see if what we heard is what we’ve experienced. And in our own space we know… or not…
Our spirituality is connected to a powerful universal life beam. It creates a throb. It creates warmth. It creates life. We are living souls and as such our lives are touched as we marvel in the simplicity of the nativity with a childlike faith. Somehow what happened thousands of years ago becomes real in so many exciting ways.
In the pauses, in the silences, we hear it, we feel it and we know… Now we can face another new year with more focused attention, believing it will be brighter and better. So we can follow our dreams and build our legacy. So we can live fully alive.
About Dr Bill Price
When he’s not playing Father Christmas for his grandchildren, Dr Bill Price is an executive neuroscience master global coach, facilitator, strategist and international influencer. You can listen to his podcasts on Spotify. His highest values include: helping people to:
- Become more fully alive fully free;
- Have relationships with greater connection;
- Harness wealth creation so they can be a giver and blessing to others; and
- Assisting them to make memories with their family in the mind and heart, “not selfies.
Dr Bill enjoys sharing his coaching skills and wealth of neuroscience expertise while traveling and having fun. He aims to empower unique groups or tribes of people and impactfully influence and intentionally guide them towards greatness as they achieve personal summits.
