the pacific north witch

The Real Lesson of Christmas: Wishes Come True

Posted on by Shanna S Mathews-Mendez

What I love about Christmas, what I have always seen as the real lesson of Christmas, is that wishes come true. Christmas allows us to hope for something, sometimes it’s rollerblades or a Playstation (I was twelve okay?) and other times it’s peace and joy. Christmas, for me, has always been about possibilities. I could get anything when I opened all those wrapped presents.

I almost always got the big thing I asked for, no matter how broke we were or how long my mom had to put stuff on layaway at Kmart. Our PG&E could get shut off the next day, but damn it we were going to get our hearts’ desire.

Transition

As we got older and moved out my mom just kept buying shit and shoving it under the tree. She bought me a five dollar blouse from Amazon last year. It buttons up in the front. I haven’t worn a button up blouse since the nineties. And even then it was a bad look on me.

Thanks Mom. 

But I realized long ago as I was opening gifts that meant nothing to me, that I would likely donate or toss after the obligatory few months of keeping them, that Christmas wasn’t about me anymore, it wasn’t about getting. It was about giving.

My mom gave us a bunch of shit because she likes to be the giver. Sure, she enjoys getting stuff too. But she really enjoys the role of giving.

And that now is who I have become. I enjoy giving. I enjoy making dreams come true. I enjoy the look on my little girl’s face as she opens gifts she never imagined she would want and the ones she specifically asked for. The magic of Christmas is now about her magic, her wishes, her anticipation.

Much of the work I do to change the world is through kids. I teach kids, my own and others’, all year round in ways that will, ideally, make the world a kinder, more compassionate place. By working to help others, to be kind to others, I am building a better world for them and for me too.

Likewise, I make Christmas magical for children, and so it is magical for me.

Fairytales

I am a firm believer in happily ever after. It often does all work out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end. If you’re not dead, it’s not the end.

I’m not dead.

I also believe that we work for our fairytales. One of the big reasons my mom spent a lifetime being disappointed is that she believed in the first part of the fairytale, but not the backstory.

Happily ever after does not mean sitting and waiting. All fairytales involve stories of hard work, of struggle, of challenge. Not one character in a fairytale was a lazy asshole who had lots of good things happen to her. In fact, the lazy asshole (Ursula in The Little Mermaid, for example) ends up speared, off a cliff, or the victim of a million other horrors.

Cinderella

Easily my favorite fairytale is that of Cinderella. This woman loses everything – her mother, her father, her inheritance – yet she maintains a positive attitude and she works hard. She busts her ass for her demanding, ungrateful stepmonster and stepbitches.

She gets a little help (hello fairy godmother) and she charms a prince who has become disenchanted by people desperate for his attention and affection, who twist themselves into something they are not to please him.

The lessons in this story are plethora. Work hard, believe in magic, keep hope alive, be yourself, be kind, fall in love.

I sing the song to Celaya, and now Matilda, before bed.

Wishes Come True

Wishes don’t fall from the sky. You do have to work for them. You have to be a good person. You have to keep believing. You have to open all the presents. And you have to give, give, give, in order to receive.

Are there examples of people who are evil and villainous, who take, take, take and still seem to win? Yes, of course. But, in the end, they always seem to find their comeuppance. You don’t hear many stories about horrible people who live happily ever after, in real life or in fiction. If they haven’t receive their comeuppance yet, it is just a matter of time.

We have to remember that, that everything is a matter of time and perception. We have to open our eyes to our roles as wish granters and receivers. We can sharpen our senses and recognize opportunities to make our wishes come true. Realize that Cinderella had to recognize the prince and the prince had to recognize Cinderella. They had to truly see each other as dreams come true in the end.

The important thing is to see the big picture, which is why I love Christmas. The holiday of magic comes at the end of the year, at the end of the big picture. We can have a tough year, a challenging time, months of struggles and nose to the grind. Perhaps we were hurt by someone, or by a whole system, but at the end of the year, we all still hold out hope that our dreams, maybe just one small dream even, will come true.

And more often than not, of we just keep on believing, they do.

178 thoughts on “The Real Lesson of Christmas: Wishes Come True”

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  147. Maintain the contraction on the top for a onerous one count, then slowly
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    The biceps supinate the elbow joint thanks to the large tendon that runs from the bottom of your biceps round to the radius of the elbow. Odds are that you’re already doing most of those (at least we hope you are). Our major hope is that this record exhibits you some moves you could not have been conscious of and may incorporate into your arm day routine, and get the peaks you’ve been on the lookout for. Below are a number of examples of different workout routines and their power curves so as to see what I imply.
    Most of us are either right-handed or left-handed, and extra individuals than you’d suppose have one biceps that’s slightly larger than the opposite. When this measurement discrepancy is less than half an inch, it’s barely noticeable. If you’re looking to target your biceps and only your biceps, then concentration curls are your exercise. After that, we’ll hold you updated on crucial muscle-building analysis, lifting methods, and workout routines. They aren’t often distinguishable from one another, but the lengthy head (outside) is claimed to give your biceps a higher peak, and the quick head (inside) is alleged to give your biceps more width. First and foremost, you need to all the time carry with the proper kind. Curling with the proper method helps to stop common weight lifting accidents while concurrently preserving more of the strain on the goal muscular tissues.
    Lifting heavier weights to attain bicep hypertrophy while preserving the wrists in a extra impartial lifting place. Begin with a lighter weight and complete this transfer initially of your arm workout, so the biceps aren’t already drained. You’re higher off upping your reps and burning the biceps as a substitute of adding an excessive quantity of weight and not with the ability to full more than a few reps. Challenge yourself with extra weight on the barbell; because of your positioning and the burden distribution, you’ll more than likely have the ability to carry more. Focus curls ought to be carried out two to four instances a week. We’re breaking down 10 bicep workout routines that will get you feeling swole, sturdy, and sculpted.
    A bulging pair of bis is a symbol of strength that grabs people’s attention and enhances your physique. By making use of these standards, Nippard was capable of separate the most effective muscle-building workouts from the ineffective ones—leading to his final rankings. One of the most effective biceps moves for hitting the short head of the biceps is the No Cash Curl. We need to guarantee we are adequately hitting the start portion off the biceps’ range of movement.
    The plank hits your glutes, core, chest, triceps and shoulders in an isometric trend. The renegade row (which is a row from a plank position) works your biceps, again, and rear delts. And the plank to squat works your legs, glutes, low back and traps. It’s a fantastic complex, multi-phase, multi-joint exercise that is going that will assist you build mass and brute power whereas burning a lot of calories at the identical time. The clear is also an exercise that could be accomplished with comparatively heavy dumbbells.
    Also generally recognized as skull crushers, lying triceps extension hit all heads of the triceps. Forcing you to isometrically contract the long head, to stop the weight from pulling the higher arm into flexion, means this predominantly targets the lengthy head. The flexed shoulder place means the lengthy head is uncovered to a loaded stretch, nice for muscle progress. This helps to make sure the triceps is taken through a full vary of motion throughout training. If you need to get well-defined biceps with out dwelling in the gym, then this is one of the greatest bicep workouts for definition that you can do. Although there are “only” four workouts, you’re still doing between thirteen and 20 sets, which is plenty of coaching volume to stimulate new muscle development.
    The mixture of these 7 elements will not solely hit all the major capabilities of human efficiency, however will lend itself to selecting the correct workouts for constructing muscle. Not solely will I present you the workout routines, I’ll clarify why I chose every single train for this full-body fitness center exercise routine. Setting Up one best whole body exercise program is a problem when you suppose about all the larger muscle groups that you should hit in that workout. You don’t need to damage your joints or pressure a muscle as a end result of it’s going to hold you out of the gym and could even put you off weight lifting altogether. Guarantee that the curl bar has spinning sleeves, as this will increase comfortability in a raise and lowers the strain on your wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints. All The Time check the bar’s warranty to see if it covers the bearings. For example, performing elbow flexion with palms up beneath a countertop.
    Just select one of the arm workouts under and do this after you practice again. Since workouts for biceps are all isolation workouts, you probably can select any for those last 7 sets. Here are some various workouts for chest that you could attempt for the 7 units. Of course, these are all strict workout routines that concentrate on your pecs (any presses for the 7 units are done on machines). Like your back exercise, you’ll be doing the fundamental mass builders on your chest. The barbell reverse curl is a non-negotiable part of arm workouts. In a current study, researchers compared the consequences of doing triceps workouts with the arms overhead versus in a neutral place.
    But once you reach the highest of the curl, plot twist, you rotate your wrists so your palms face down. Then, you lower the dumbbells again to the beginning place together with your palms still going through down. This switcheroo makes the Zottman curl a great exercise for including muscle mass to each your biceps and forearms.
    The preacher curl ought to be your go-to train whenever you want to isolate your biceps utterly. You place your upper arm in a fixed position, making it inconceivable to cheat or to make use of different muscle tissue to assist curl the weight up. The biceps brachii (or simply the biceps for short) is a two-headed muscle situated on the front of the upper arm. The two heads (the quick and the lengthy head) start at completely different spots on your shoulder blade and be part of together on the elbow. Whereas we went over the compound exercises, keep in mind that you continue to want to apply this identical concept to the biceps.

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