Thursday, December 24, 2015

It's the Holiday Season



(This blog was originally posted on December 7, 2014)



Photo courtesy of Microsoft






                For me, nothing says the holiday season like inclement winter weather. Perhaps I am simply suggestible to the cozy images of houses covered in snow and icicles depicted in Hallmark advertisements, but I just can’t seem to get into the holiday spirit when the sun is shining. Southern California is not known for the blizzards and heavy snow that occurs elsewhere in the United States in December through February—let alone most countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Consequently, I often have trouble reconciling what I want and think the season should look and feel like compared to what it is actually like. I remember temperatures soaring into the eighties and even nineties (degrees Fahrenheit) on many Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. My friends in England would be ooh-ing and ahh-ing with envy while all I wanted was to be watching snow fall outside my window.
                Of course, the symbolism of and sentiment behind these holidays has nothing to do with what the weather is like. People who live in Brisbane, Australia will open Christmas presents on December 25, just like people in Berlin, Germany will do. However, citizens in Australia will likely be wearing lightweight clothing to stay cool in their hot summer weather, while celebrants in Europe will probably be bundled up in warm clothes to stay warm and protect against freezing temperatures. In both cases, these scenarios will be comfortable and familiar for the people who live there because they know what to expect from the weather where they live. It is what they know.
                As I explained in my December 25, 2013 blog titled “Venturing into the Unknown,” Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John G. Kappas, Ph.D. and his brother, Alex G. Kappas, Ph.D., observed that the subconscious mind identifies and integrates your experiences as “known” or “unknown” phenomena. Also, we get our suggestibility from our primary caretaker—usually mom—whose attitudes and behaviors we imitate and integrate into our own behavioral repertoire during early childhood. Once the subconscious mind recognizes an event or stimulus as a known entity, it becomes comfortable and an accepted part of your experiential repertoire. In fact, this familiarity often induces an initial subconscious resistance to and rejection of anything different (i.e., “unknown”) until the SCM integrates that new stimulus as a known and is therefore comfortable or safe for you to enjoy, as well.
                Since I grew up in Southern California, where the weather is often mild in the winter, I can only guess that I learned to identify and prefer cold and snow during this season from my parents. They both grew up on the East Coast and told me and my sister plenty of stories about snow days off from school and even having to dig their cars out from under a snow bank following a storm. I heard those stories so often, and even though my own experience of snow was so rare, the note of nostalgia I perceived in my parents’ anecdotes made me yearn to get snow days, too. One of my favorite early-childhood memories is of feeling warm and cozy after waking up at my grandparents’ home in New York, the entire neighborhood covered under a thick blanket of winter snow during the night. When I lived in England, to my delight, I got quite a few snow days of my own.
                Now that I’m living in Southern California once again, it is unlikely that I will wake up to icicles on my rooftop this winter. However, recent weather forecasts are predicting rain on Christmas day, and I have heard several mentions of a Godzilla El Nino heading our way. But rain is one of my knowns, and if this is true, I can’t wait.
                It’s beginning to feel a lot more like the Holiday Season, now.



Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
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