Reading Time: 2 minutes“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
– Charles Dickens
“It just doesn’t seem like Christmas.” When I’m actually present enough to realize what I’ve just said, I pause and marvel at my ability to assume that Christmas should just feel like Christmas because it’s supposed to feel like Christmas.
Like most other things I assume are facts (with absolutely no evidence to support the assumption), Christmas starts feeling like Christmas at the very moment I make it feel like Christmas.
Here is a list of questions to ask myself that I bring out every Christmas, the very second I think it doesn’t feel like Christmas:
1. It’s the middle of December. Are you working ten hours a day, six days a week?
2. Have you done anything for the holidays except shop?
3. Does your home look different than it does the other eleven months of the year?
4. Have you actually read a Christmas card someone sent you?
5. Have you wished anyone who you weren’t giving your credit card to a happy holiday?
6. Do you have plans for Hanukkah? Christmas Eve?
7. Is there anything in your refrigerator that isn’t there the other eleven months of the year?
8. Have you kissed someone under a Mistletoe?
9. Have you invited anyone over to your home for a little holiday cheer?
10. Have you apologized for what you did at the office Christmas party yet?
I just answered “No” to at least seven questions, and I can’t figure out why it doesn’t feel like Christmas. Go figure.
He graduated from UCLA with a BA in philosophy as well as a degree from the Southern California School of Culinary Arts, and feels food is one of the most important parts of a life - it can nourish, heal, and bring people together.
Michael believes health and well-being are as much a state of mind as they are a state of the body, and when it comes to fitness, food, and life in general, he thinks slow is much better than fast (most of the time). Stopping regularly to examine things is the surest way to put down roots and grow.
He knows he will never be done with his own work, and believes the best thing you can do for your well-being starts with loving and working from what you’ve got right now.
