Deep Thoughts: How To Get Your Christmas Mojo On

How Christmas-y are you feeling right now? For real. To be honest, I’m feeling pretty Christmas-y because of a few things I’ve done in the past couple of days. For example: I went to the mouth of hell (Saara) to buy the Christmas decorations, I’ve started listening to Christmas music and decorated the tree.

It’s the little things, really, that make Christmas come alive. It helps to bake cookies with the kids, or by yourself. Just don’t eat them all on your own, spread the joy, share the love. Look for movies that impart the principles and joys of this celebration. Listening to Christmas music is a great way to lift one’s spirits and help bring on the Christmas mojo.

In general it’s recommended to live in a peaceful state and cultivate an environment of love, giving, peace, joy, and happiness, especially during this time of year. If you’re looking for a home or family that represents this kind of Christmas spirit, don’t visit my house. I know I can talk the big talk, but when it comes down to it, we’re a loud, screaming bunch of heathens. But, we do what we can and one can only do so much, but I do make an effort.

During this season I take the following measures to ensure that our home is as PH as possible: I try to be very Stepford, my sister tries to tell me when I’m losing my cool, instead of screaming like a psycho I scream like a lunatic (which everyone knows is much better than a psycho), I try to pretend to like people I don’t (the hardest one of all). In order to do this I use underlying sarcasm instead of straight up, in-your-face sarcasm, which I’ve been told I do well and I think it’s a little better especially during the holiday season. That way if people want to understand it, they can, if not, they can take what I said at face value and everyone’s happy.

Another thing I do which I think helps a lot is I channel people out. If I don’t like the energy coming from one person or another I just don’t give them any air time, so to speak. They can say what they want, I’ll nod my head and acknowledge their presence (or not), but then I’ll just do whatever the hell I want. This strategy has proven extremely successful throughout the years. I would not be the same person today were it not for this method of keeping a peace barrier around me to shield me from Grinches who want to humbug everyone and everything, from the messy people who want to make my house a “no peace zone”, from the looters and leeches who want to take but not give, and last but not least children who think that fighting is synonymous with existing (they are so at that annoying faze).

The idea with tuning people out is a coping mechanism used to channel out negativity. Like Charlie Brown with his teacher, she would speak but all he ever heard was, “Wah wah, wah wah wah wah, wah wah”. You can see someone’s lips moving, but you don’t have to hear anything other than “Yada, yada, yada”. You see, there will always be some Grinch or Scrooge in your life, but you have a choice as to whether you want to listen to them or not. And I choose not.

When using the tuning out method, the way to create a peace barrier is to use your soothing words, whatever they may be, like: Woosah, Goosefrabah, Kumbaya, Serenity Now…. And the list goes on. You can create new ones like: Black Label, Cosmopolitan, Mojito, Caipirinha… Those are good soothing words. You see, I just threw you some precious jewels for to use during the holidays that will help you keep it together and most importantly, get your Christmas mojo on!

If you have a trick or two up your sleeve, please do share with the rest of us.