What a wonderful, busy time of year this is! Many of us have holidays from school and work. We celebrate the winter solstice — the longest night of the year gives birth to the returning of the light. This year the full moon and a total lunar eclipse marked the turn. Whatever solstice means to you, triple it!

Then there’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Festivus. We gather with those we love and care about to celebrate our faith and traditions in good cheer.

Then New Year’s, Eve and Day. Have you gotten your calendars yet?

December is a month of bustle, socializing, celebrating, feasting, shopping, partying, getting out into the world. It goes by so quickly. January is quieter, colder, more still, more stay-at-home, more introspective, and is the longest month, in my opinion.

I dub December the extrovert’s favorite month, while January is beloved by introverts.

I love this end-of-year time, the days of Solstice and the New Year and all the days in between, as a time to wrap up the old year and let visions of my future self dance in my head as I prepare for a new year.

I once celebrated Christmas as the major holiday of the year, when I was a child, and later when I had a child living at home. The excitement of Christmas morning, presents under the tree — that rocked!

I still like Santa a lot. My friends Alec and Karan have a Santa figurine that captured my attention this year. It looks like  an intricately branched piece of light gray driftwood with Santa’s face and beard appearing on one side. It’s surprising — Santa as wood spirit. This Santa isn’t jolly or merry, he’s peaceful and content. He comes from nature, not Madison Avenue.

Seeing their driftwood Santa helped me clarify that today I perceive Santa as a spirit of winter, a wise and wintry man, the epitome of generosity and kindness to children — a far cry from my childhood idea of Santa as one whom I could ask for whatever I wanted, with an understanding that he would bring it, if only I was worthy.

Of course, I always got stuff (good little girls like me often mistook compliance for worthiness). There was the build-up and the inevitable let-down. Too much excitement segued into something like a sugar crash by the afternoon of Christmas day, complete with tears. Rebalancing.

I understand now that in the way of the child, I was encouraged to mistake my heart’s desires for material goods, a far inferior substitute. In allowing that substitution, I also unknowingly devalued my own worthiness. Worthiness is not compliance. Worthiness is standing up for your heart’s desire. Those heart’s desires could not be wrapped in a package and tied with a bow. Indeed, often the heart’s desires cannot be articulated, only felt, as yearning.

In the way of the adult, it is the experience of desiring, even more than receiving, that defines us humans so deeply. To experience one’s heart desiring is to experience one’s worthiness.

Does the object of desire really even matter that much? Yes, when you are in the clutches of desiring! No, it’s that feeling of expansion in the heart center, that reaching out of one’s energy to include that someone or something else, that dream of something bigger, that matters.

Enjoy it all! The desiring, the receiving, the gratitude, the letting go, the not receiving, the disappointment, the moving on, the emptiness between desires, the new desire.

The child in me has matured through expectation, hope, delight,disappointment, skepticism, cynicism, to perhaps a faith in something inside all of us. Heart’s desires. For peace in the world and in our own beings. For love to give and to receive. For awareness of life’s gifts and brevity. For this moment here with you.

Best wishes of the season from me to you!

Woke this morning as I often do, to my pushy but loving cat Mango snuggling up close to me, then gently touching me with his paw (claws out), to which I recoil and push him away because it hurts. Repeat several times. He loves to snuggle. His claws are too long. I don’t think he knows that it hurts.

How much patience he has with me, getting pushed away morning after morning. He usually just keeps coming back. Occasionally he leaves the room, and then I feel bad. I’ve driven him away when all he was doing was trying to love me and be close. (And get me out of bed to feed him his favorite cat treats — he’s always got plenty of dry food in the bowl, so he’s not starving.)

I make sure that I don’t pet him in my bedroom very much. I’d like for him to get a clear idea that petting, scratching, and massage are for when we’re on the sofa, and the bedroom is just for sleeping. But it’s not working very well.  He loves my hands. They are the source of love, and he seeks them out. I hide my hands from him under the covers or pillows until I’m ready to get up. It’s a little game we play.

He loves me for my hands.

Yeah, I’m okay with that. He gives good eye contact , shows his appreciation, and loves a good cuddle. Sometimes he even drapes himself across my chest with his head over my shoulder, just to get more body contact. He hugs! (I think maybe he has abandonment issues — he was a stray that I adopted, and he seems to show me his gratitude every day, which I love.)

But I don’t love his paws because of his sharp, long claws.

I could lock him out of my bedroom and sleep a little later. Or I could trim his claws. Not my favorite thing to do because I don’t do it well and have hurt previous cats, accidentally cutting into the quick. Since he spends a lot of time outdoors, I assumed he didn’t need his claws trimmed. But hmmm. Mango is not a tree climber, not an athletic cat. My daughter makes fun of his fat-boy walk. I tell her he’s not fat any more, just big. (He overate when I first adopted him from the streets, but he’s slimmed down a bit.) She still loves to watch him walk.

If I trim his claws, he’s the perfect cat. Affectionate, snuggly, sweet.

I think I’ll do it. Learn how to do it without hurting him. I can do that. I can do that.