Feliz Navidades and Happy Chanukah Contest

It's December again and all that comes with that month. I tell myself every year that it will be different but every year predictably I become a scrooge. This year I promised I would really try to be fresh and original in my demeanor. I had my first opportunity Friday night at the Chester night celebration of the incoming holiday season. However, as if the muses for scrooge heard me, I wished someone my very first merry Christmas of the season. Without missing a beat, in a dead pan face, she responded "I don't do Christmas and you have offended me." I think...no...I believe that she was only kidding but the effect of her effusive humor left me drained and embarrassed. I slowly extricated myself from the conversation and let my love bug, Stanton, handle the bantering of dry sarcasm and cynicism, as only a Jew can do. That was December 4Th. That evening while falling asleep, I consoled myself by reminding myself that it may be to early for some folks.

The very next day, December 5Th, while visiting my sister in in NYC, as I looked out her living room window at dusk, wondering about all the peoples lives, in the many lit windows across the way, my eyes drifted over some colored lights twinkling below. To my surprise my heart felt a tug. I tried as hard as I could not to let it effect me, buh humbug, but it put a smile on face.

In a matter of two days I had two distinct feelings about the holiday season. Now that got me thinking about the holidays and something I read a couple of years ago.

"These holidays, religion aside, are about transformation and the emergence of a new self. They are most definitely not about who you will spend them with or what you have to do or buy for relatives and friends, or whether there are finances enough to buy it all. Such material considerations rob us of energy and eat away at our soul. Yet such anxiety-ridden dynamics will prevail if we surrender to the endless nagging of our ego mind. Those of us who wish for a deeper experience of the holidays should remember that we are responsible for our own thinking. We can embrace the deeper meaning of the holidays that matter to us, celebrating the days on which they occur from a place of serious wonder and awe. We don't need to go along with the pack: indeed we can consciously repudiate the shallower thought forms that pervade it. Sometimes you can feel there's an undertow, but choose to try to swim across it with every bit of strength that you have. When it comes to the temptation to make Christmas and Hanukkah more about the gift of the catalogue than the gifts of the spirit, JUST SAY NO. Once we recognize the real power of holidays, we begin to approach them with deeper devotion. A holiday is a holy day, and holiness doesn't happen to us. Holiness is a choice we make, and holidays are portals of energy through which the experience of things that matter most is increased within us and in the world in which we live. Marianne Williamson Everyday Grace

That being said I have decided to hold a contest. IF YOU CHOOSE, here is what you have to do: Send me a message in the next 15 days either on blog or to my email address of holiday spirit. Something, anything, a story, memory, anecdote or picture, that exemplifies the above two paragraphs by Marianne Williamson. The item or story that represents holiday spirit the most to me wins a Little Chick of there choice and will be published here on my blog and announced on December 25Th. Good Luck! I wish you all the best while transforming and blessed birth in your new beginnings.

Please keep in mind......... for those of you that are looking for that special someone or FOR something special Think ART!!!!!!!

You will not only give something that is lasting and lovely to the one you love, but you will also give the artist a much needed lift both financially and spiritually.

I will be open every day but it is best to call before coming by since I tend to take walks to stretch my legs, sneak out for sushi with a friend or drift upstairs to see Stanton. The Chicken Little's are on sale for the holiday, 50% off. I have posters, postcards and prints available plus the studio is full of discounted paintings.