During December we have many opportunities to celebrate cultural, spiritual or religious holidays in our own unique and thoughtful ways. Just a few examples are Sinterklaas, or St. Nicholas Day, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve.
How do you enjoy celebrating your special holidays?
If your special holiday tradition requires the purchase of material gifts, I understand such traditions and partake in such customs as well, like I talk about in Decorating a Christmas Tree with a Disability.
I have found the simpler, non-material gifts have more meaning and are just as valuable as anything that can be purchased, in my opinion.
In Special Thoughts During Holidays I talk about the gratitude and joy that can be experienced from non-material gifts, as I laid in a hospital bed for 7 months.
In Holiday Traditions I talk about how after I went completely blind I am still able to experience my enjoyable traditions that include family and friends.
It is far more important to be grateful and find meaning in simple meaningful gifts of human companionship and helping others when we celebrate our traditions. With the global instability in the world we are experiencing, these attitudes and actions are even more important to help us enjoy the holidays and others during this time of joyful and caring celebrations.
Even a simple gift of a glass of lemonade can be cherished with extreme joy! To learn how and why a glass of lemonade can taste so good and be the best gift of all, if this was your first drink of cool liquid in many months, listen to Lemonade on the Road to Recovery on Podcasts at the Global Dialogue Center.
My Thoughts Of Valuable Simple Gifts Of Appreciation
• Give the gift of your personal companionship by spending time with others.
• Offer your expertise to others to help them. In return, you will find the person you help can help you equally and mutualisticly.
• Work to help the less fortunate, or those who are in need.
• Offer some of your time and energy to help others in your community and in the world.
• If you are in a position to give, give to others and organizations that can use your aid.
• Teach, mentor and give guidance to people in your personal and professional life.
• If in your professional life you are in direct contact with customers, treat them with respect and caring, like you should do for other co-workers.
• If you are working, educate yourself for innovation and leadership thinking, even if you’re in an individual contributor role.
These gifts I list are equally reciprocal as gifts to yourself. When you give the gift of oneself, there are others that receive your gifts through the people you touch you will never know benefited from your generosity. These gifts of ones self spread from person to person like wild flower seeds blowing through the wind and sowing an open field of dry grasses with the seeds of life. With kindness and gratitude and helping to create a better place for all I picture the gifts of California Poppy, Purple and pink Lupine seeds covering the hillsides for miles and miles. Soon a field of beautiful bright orange, vivid purple and vibrant pink flowers cover the fields where once only dry grasses, rocks and dirt in a variety of brown and tan hues existed.
During this holiday season, let’s plant some wild flowers of joy for others by giving the unselfish gift of our self.
How do you like to celebrate your special holidays? How might you celebrate this year? Will you be the one who gives the gift of a drink of lemonade to a person who was not able to drink any cool liquids for many months and make their day? We all look forward to hearing from you, so we can celebrate this enjoyable season together.
Bill Tipton
Contributing Author
Global Dialogue Center
http://www.globaldialoguecenter.com/