Recently I have become interested in rituals, where they come from and understanding their importance to me. This has become of interest in relation to my focus on Coaching and it’s a fascinating subject.

So, with Christmas being something that is full of rituals, I wanted to look at them in more detail.

• The big picture: I mapped out all of the rituals that make up the bigger ritual of Christmas. This included getting presents, Christmas food, secret Santa, Christmas cards, Christmas cake etc. With this information, I then had the knowledge required to move onto the next step.
• Where to focus: I wanted to select one ritual to change as I know if I selected more it most likely won’t happen 🙂 I wanted to identify something that was going to firstly be easy to change and secondly could have an impact beyond the Christmas period. With these criteria in mind, I ended up narrowing it down to a few options and ended up at the ‘Chrismas Cards’ ritual.

Now that I had narrowed down my focus on to the ritual I wanted to change this Christmas, I had to explore a little deeper by asking… 

• Where did it come from: This ritual is not one that I had created myself but instead was passed onto me from family and friends in my early years and had since embedded itself as behaviour.
• Why is it important: This seemed to be important to me for two reasons: the first being to show people they are in your thoughts at Christmas and second to spread some joy at Christmas.
• What could be even more important to replace it with: When exploring this, I came to realise that it might be even more important to think about, and spread joy to those children who are most in need at Christmas.

Reflecting on the above, as a family this year we have decided to change a ritual taught to us, into a ritual that has greater importance to us and the world moving forward. This year we will be…

“Turning a Christmas Ritual into a Christmas Wish”

We are doing this with the help of a site that focuses on this (https://www.dontsendmeacard.com/)

I share this to encourage you all to explore your rituals. Challenge them and ask yourself this question…

What could be even more important than this ritual?

Have Happy Christmas readers and hope you have a fantastic holiday season!

As always I would love to hear your thoughts!