WHOSE HOLIDAY IS IT ANYWAY?

December 18, 2007 | Celebrating | Sandye

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Thoughts from Sandye Linnetz, Systems Goddess, Process Prodigy

It’s that time of year again…. The stores are crowded, the streets are crowded and our schedules are crowded. We have all the usual “stuff” to attend to plus the added holiday minutiae of greetings, gifts, family dinners, office parties and other social obligations. And then there are those pesky holiday social “questions”

How do you celebrate when it’s not YOUR holiday? Do you say Merry Christmas if you don’t observe Christmas? Do you allow your children to be in the Christmas pageant, sing a Hanukkah song or light a Kwanzaa candle if that’s not your religious bent? Do you go to the community tree lighting, go caroling, attend holiday parties and give gifts when the holiday you are honoring would not be YOUR holiday? Do you give Christmas presents to people who don’t celebrate Christmas or give Hanukah presents on Christmas? Do you throw a Christmas party and invite your non-Christian friends? Do you invite non-Jewish friends to spin a dreidle or eat potato pancakes with you? Do you boycott or protest that YOUR holiday is not being honored when someone celebrates his/her own? What’

s a person to do?

Try this on: It’s a holiday… it’s a celebration…

Does it really have to be YOURS, or can you simply get into the spirit of the occasion?

Celebration noun: the action of marking one's pleasure at an important event or occasion by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity

I remember hearing (from a rabbi, via a friend) that celebrating someone else’s holiday was the same as being invited to someone else’s birthday party. It’s not YOUR birthday, so it’s not YOUR holiday, but that doesn’t stop you from going to the party, singing Happy Birthday, giving a gift or playing pin the tail on the donkey, doe it? It doesn’t stop you from mingling with friends or joining in the birthday festivities and, perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t negate YOUR birth, does it? And when it’s time for our birthdays, what do we do? We simply –

and happily - invite people to come to OUR birthday parties because we want them to share the good times with us.

So, stop thinking about celebration as dilemma. Just get out there and share the good times... celebrate… no matter who’

s holiday it is!© 2007 Beth Schneider, Process Prodigy, Inc. Want to reprint this article? Feel free as long as you include the following: Beth Schneider, President of Process Prodigy Inc., www.processprodigy.com, along with her team of highly sought after operations consultants, reveals the insider secrets billion-dollar corporations pay thousands of dollars for. Specializing in process creation, the Process Prodigy tools and techniques have helped entrepreneurs increase productivity by as much as 600% and revenues by as much as 250%. Visit www.processprodigy.com and sign up to receive the Process Prodigy Ezine, "Your Tips" and the FREE Report “How to Save Yourself Time Energy and Money”.