“We do Christmas exceptionally well,” I remarked to my husband and two adult children at the end of this year’s long, leisurely, soul-filling day.

Christmas Day is one of my favorite days of the year, because it’s one day where we are all together, and we take our time with everything. My son usually goes to his best friend’s Mexican Christmas Eve party, where the gift exchanges don’t start until midnight and the party lasts until 3a.m. or later. So he was sleeping in on Christmas Day.

That was great. It gave the rest of us time to move through our usual morning routines. I do my morning pages (three pages of longhand on whatever comes to mind–a great way to get through any unprocessed issues and start the day off receptive to the new). Then I do my meditative readings (mostly Scripture and other inspirational/devotional reading), while using the Halo. Then, breakfast, my Healing Codes/healing prayer method (you’ll be hearing more about that), and my walk. Finally, shower and dress, and I’m all ready for the world.

This morning, Christmas, I also made our traditional Christmas breakfast, blueberry coffeecake. I stuffed the turkey and put it in the oven. We made our way slowly through the hours, eating the coffeecake, preparing more food, hanging out, chatting. Finally, just when the turkey was done, everyone was finally ready to open presents! Oh well. I left the turkey in the oven on warm and we opened our gifts.

We take our time with that, too. Christine was the resident present-passer, and we unwrapped each present, one at a time, taking turns.

This year it struck me that there is an art to gift giving. It is really about honoring the relationship. When I receive a thoughtful gift from someone, what makes me feel loved is that they actually saw who I am, and carefully picked out something they knew I would like. And it cost them something: money, the time to shop.

Let me give you some examples. Read More→