It’s time to open the closet of our mind again! Just in time for the holidays! Let’s take a look at the traditions we hang on to and whether we should keep them or let them go.

It’s the time of year when we replay in our minds the memories we’ve made during all the holidays we’ve experienced, from childhood up until last year. We think about who we have shared these special days with in the past and who will be included in the future, what activities we have done and what we will do this year, where we have traveled to before and where we will go this time around, and, most impactfully, how the holiday ended up before versus how we hope it will go this year.

The very idea of everyone sitting down at the long table, enjoying a great meal and laughter together warms our hearts! It’s what we’ve been taught is the ideal since we were kids. I can picture it in my mind as I type this. It’s beautiful. Everyone is full of gratitude. You can’t wait to do it again next year. If this is what you experience, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist or this therapist to tell you to KEEP DOING IT!

I just wonder if this image is just an expectation or reality for you?

I wonder if you look around the holiday table in your mind and see the faces of those once present but no longer. The wave of emotions that come over us as we examine those who may have started our traditions, but have departed from our lives. Or the ones we shared our traditions with who have been taken with little or no say so from us. Sometimes we realize the one who is gone is the one who held us together. What now?

You may also look around at the holiday table in your mind and realize that not everyone is full of love and laughter and gratitude. Holidays are often a gathering of family, friends, “frienemies” and “fanemies” (friends + enemies, family + enemies lol) all in the same place. Let’s face it, we may be related by DNA or marriage but that doesn’t make us perfectly compatible. The image that may come to mind for you is the heated argument over politics, religion or education while eating turkey dinner. Right? And, let’s not even talk about the one misguided relative who can’t seem to stop herself from improving stuffing. It’s stuffing! It doesn’t need improving. Hold the kale and quinoa, please!

When we think about how our holiday traditions have played out in the past, does it send us to our happy hopeful closet or our anxiety-filled closet of terror? If there is anxiety, it’s time to challenge our traditions! Are they beneficial to our emotional health? Do we have to do something because we always have before? Does it ever feel like we are forcing an outcome? Perhaps if everyone spoke truth, no one really is enjoying it anymore, but we are still doing it because it is what we always have done. Or believe it’s what we should do.

We often hold fast to our traditions, whether they are beneficial for us or not. My challenge for us is to be intentional when looking at our traditions- especially the what, where, when, who and why- and ask ourselves some tough questions. Is it time to create something new, leave something old, modify your plans, incorporate new people, serve the community, etc…?   It’s okay to stop things that aren’t emotionally healthy. As a matter of fact you SHOULD.

The only absolute when it comes to this season is holding fast to the WORD of GOD, not to traditions of man. 2Thes 2:15

If it isn’t serving you- or, more importantly, if it isn’t serving Him- you may need to let go and make room in your heart for something new.

NOW, I ENCOURAGE YOU, GO CLEAN OUT YOUR TRADITION CLOSET!

Be blessed with the peace of focusing on the reason for the season and not what you have traditionally made it to be.