This holiday season, instead of thinking about what the holidays might mean to someone on a religious or secular level, I thought it might be more helpful to think about how one handled the holidays.  It’s easy to postulate about what the holidays should mean or what religious sentiments we should be having.  Instead, I thought it might be helpful to do some “Monday morning quarterbacking” and help people ask some questions that might help them think about how they think they handled the holidays on both a human and perhaps an extra-human level.  So think of this as a holiday-autopsy.  It doesn’t matter how you did really;  what really maters is how YOU feel about you did and what changes you might want to make.  Indeed, the way you handled the holidays might indicate the kind of changes you might want to make during the New Year.

So to help you along in your self examination, here are some questions that might help you in your search for self knowledge.  They don’t presuppose any value set except those that YOU think that are important to you:

1.  Did the holidays MEAN anything to you?  Did they bring an extra boost of some sense of purpose to your life or were they just another ordeal to survive?

2.  Did the holidays bring any strong emotions to the surface to you?  Happy?  Sad?  Angry?  Can you figure out why?

3.  Did the holidays help you become closer to anyone you consider close to you, friend or family?

4.  Did the holidays bring you closer to any sense of Mystery that you consider important?  If so how?  If not, why not?

5.  Did the work of the holidays make the things they are supposed to celebrate less or more relevant to you?

6.  Did you attend any kind of religious rituals for the holidays?  Did they help make the holidays more relevant?

7.  Did the holidays make you more psychologically symptomatic, e.g. more depressed, more anxious, more sad about a death, more sad about being single, etc.

8.  Did you find yourself aggravated by the holidays, wishing that they’d “just be over with?”

9.  Are the holidays “tough” for you because of the socializing you have to do?

10.  Do you find yourself wondering why the holidays bring such cheer to everyone else but you?

There is no real scorecard to this.  It’s not like three vs eight “yes’s” are good or bad.  The issue is:  Do any of these questions throw any light onto yourself?  If even one question causes you to engage in some real self reflection, then perhaps something good can from the Holidays after all!