Why Do the Holidays Cost Us More Than We Expect—Financially and Emotionally?

This commentary steps back to consider why the holidays so often leave us wanting to fix what we feel afterward. When I reflect on the holiday season, it often seems to me that what should be a time of joy quickly becomes a season of stress and unease. Perhaps it happens because many of us […]

What If the Best Part of Christmas Isn’t the Part We Think?

Commentary I find myself both grateful and uneasy during these weeks. Family gatherings, long-held traditions, cultural expectations, and religious observances all converge at once. It is a season filled with joy and meaning—but also with pressure that can quietly reshape what we value and how we experience one another. Have you ever paused to think […]

What Happens to Christmas When the Children Are Grown?—a reflection

What happens to Christmas when the noise fades, the presents stop, and the children are grown? That question has stayed with me as I’ve grown older—and as Christmas itself has quietly changed. My mother died from tuberculosis  when I was two years old.  I was raised by my grandparents. We were very poor. Our house […]