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In this gentle and reflective episode, James explores the complicated mix of emotions that arise during the holiday season—joy and grief, celebration and loneliness, fulfillment and disappointment. He invites listeners to recognize how cultural and personal expectations often shape, and distort, what we believe a “perfect” holiday should be, especially in seasons of change or loss. Rather than clinging to scripted meanings from childhood or idealized images from media, James encourages a compassionate loosening of expectations, an honoring of our real emotional landscape, and a more spacious, present-moment experience of whatever the holiday brings. Ultimately, he reminds each listener that the true gift of the season is not perfection but presence—our own infinitely precious selves—and invites us to receive the holidays with simplicity, honesty, tenderness, and openness to something new.
Creators and Guests
What is Infinitely Precious?
Everyone is infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift they already are. Through affirmation and practice, each of us can begin to live from a place of recognizing our own preciousness and its extension in to everyone and everything else.
Welcome to the infinitely precious podcast produced by infinitely precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
James:Hello, beloved. It's me, James. And it is for many of us in the world, a season of holiday. Whether you are following the path of Jesus and Christmas is your holiday, whether you are Jewish and Hanukkah is your holiday, there are so many holiday possibilities beyond the two I even mentioned in this season. And holidays are kind of a mixed event for us if we're really honest about them.
James:There's joy, but there's also grief in the midst of holidays. There's fullness and there's also loneliness, celebration, and then exhaustion. There's gratitude and there's disappointment. There are all these feelings that get mixed in to us, through us, for us in the midst of the season. We place so much of a burden on the holidays.
James:We listen to the cultural stories of what the holidays are supposed to bring. Sometimes we have religious expectations from those childhood memories of perhaps attending some sort of worship experience. We have a longing for something that seems to be missing, and we have these scripts that remind us of our childhood, of the mystery and joy of these seasons, we begin to become attached to what will come of the season, what we need for the season to be. And oftentimes it's things like perfection, having a perfect holiday, whatever that is. The perfectly decorated tree if you celebrate Christmas, or the perfect foods perhaps.
James:You're expecting certain emotional things to rise up inside of you. I do. We do. We're expecting something and we attach value to the holiday around those kinds of messages that we've received. It's not helpful that oftentimes, it doesn't take much whether you're listening to the radio or watching TV or other sources that a lot of the ads are about what a perfect holiday will look like.
James:And so we begin to get these attachments to things turning out a certain way. And when we become attached to things, we begin to expect certain things to happen. The sense of what is supposed to happen as opposed to what really happens becomes the backdrop around which we look at the holiday to see if it was successful or not or meaningful or not, if it fulfilled us or left us empty. Now, we start to become disillusioned with what will this holiday bring. We already know some of the things that we're carrying into the holiday if we're being honest.
James:For me, there have been a lot of changes in my world this year. I've talked about it in the podcast before now, but the loss of my father, it's the first Christmas without my dad. It's the first Christmas without my wife's mother. It is the first Christmas in a new setting as the pastor of a different community. These changes mean that some of the expectations I have about what Christmas might look like are already being shaped in my mind about people who won't be there, ways of celebrating that will look different, will feel different, communities that will be different when we gather with them.
James:Lots of different things sort of disrupt the script we've got playing in our mind, the childhood expectations or the adult scripting that we've given to what is going to happen, and they become disrupted. There can be tension, familial tension that rises. Grief can speak louder into our lives than joy does. It can be a season when we feel our loneliness even more acutely than we feel at other times. There are so many things that can disrupt the season turning out with all of the expectations and attachments we've placed on it.
James:And then we begin to wonder why we do the holidays at all. What are we supposed to do with holidays that don't offer the fulfillment that we were expecting all along? Are we supposed to just give up all expectations? Are we supposed to avoid the holidays altogether? Pretend like they don't matter?
James:What are we meant to do? And here is where this idea of being infinitely precious really comes in I think. Disappointment for you, the infinitely precious listener, It shows you where you're still tender. Where there are spots in your life that you're feeling that tenderness. It's an invitation to be compassionate.
James:To be compassionate with your disappointment, with your grief, with your sadness, with the fact that you've attached all these values that are going to be disappointed, that are going to be unmet. It's an opportunity in addition to being compassionate with yourself, to be compassionate with others who are also struggling in the season. It's an invitation to loosen your grip from trying to control exactly how you decorate, exactly how you celebrate, exactly what foods are consumed, exactly who comes or does not come to the celebration. It's an invitation to loosen your grip, to recognize that as much as you'd like to be in control, you're not. None of us are.
James:We don't control. It's an invitation to look at the holidays perhaps differently than you have before, perhaps more spaciously. Instead of all of the attachments with scripted meanings that you brought with you from a child, what would it look like to try to take this holiday, whatever this holiday is, just for what it offers for a new experience. Christmas Eve will be new for me this year as a follower in the path of Jesus. I'm the pastor of a whole different congregation than I was before.
James:Two worship services with faces that have become familiar to me in the last six months, but are new to me in many ways. So those celebrations will be different and look different. So it's an invitation for me to experience being a part of that community and to kind of let Christmas be a celebration that comes to me as opposed to my attaching pieces to it. It's an invitation for me to try to be present rather than plan for every way I should feel, to be present with the feelings I do feel, to be there where I am, and to honor whatever the real emotional landscape is in my own life. And I invite you to do the same thing.
James:Honor whatever way you're feeling as a part of this. When you catch yourself planning for or expecting or attaching a certain value to whatever holiday you're coming towards, is it possible for you to let that expectation go? To recognize for what it is and then just release it. To release it, recognizing that it does not have to be what the holiday is about. You set a bar and then you measure everything by the bar you've set.
James:What about if instead of measuring anything by any bar, you simply be present and experience what happens? So I want to invite you to think about a couple of things. A couple of questions occurred to me. What expectations are you carrying, am I carrying into this holiday that are just asking to be released? What ones am I almost already disappointed to even be carrying?
James:What is it that's asking to be released in this holiday? What's the simplest, most honest way I can show up this year with room for tenderness for myself and tenderness for those around me. What can I do to show up in the simplest possible way? Holidays can be a wonderful time. I'm not trying to suggest to you that they're a downer because they aren't necessarily.
James:But sometimes we attach a lot of things, a lot of expectations about ways that things ought to be. And instead, perhaps this is an invitation to see things the way they are, to really be in the moment and maybe allow the holiday, whatever holiday you celebrate, to speak something new into your heart. But that requires that you let go of the things, the old things perhaps, that you're holding onto that seem to be so important for the season to work out for you. What is the simplest way you can approach this season, the simplest way you can receive this season of holiday? What will make it holy, sacred, set apart, divine, revelation for you?
James:Does it have to be all the things that you think have to be there? Or could it be that the holiday is inviting you to let go of all of those pieces and just enter in? My friend, you are sacred. You are infinitely precious, unconditionally loved, and you are a gift. The gift of this season is not something outside of you.
James:It's something within you. It is you. You are a gift. Experience yourself as a gift and experience this season as a gift as you enter into it. Let the day be holy on its own without you attaching things that you imagine will make it holy for you.
James:You are indeed infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. If this has been helpful for you, I encourage you to share it with your friends in this season around any holiday, quite frankly, that arises and may bring with it some disappointment. If you're not feeling any disappointment at all, but you have a friend who is, you can share this obviously. But I always welcome your feedback. I've even gotten some recent feedback from some of my podcasts of people who saw things a little differently.
James:And I really appreciate that. We don't all see it the same. I don't even always see it the same. So thanks for those kinds of that kind of feedback. As always, it's good to have you with us.
James:I'm so glad you're on this journey with me and that I get to be on this journey with you. So until the next time, I wish you the happiest of holidays or the simplest of holidays, the almost honest of holidays, whatever seems most, you know, hit you right, may that be true for you. Thanks for joining me. Until the next time.