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This week: New Old Traditions Edited by: KimChi  
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The traditions of our faith and culture are normally handed down from our ancestors. Nothing wrong with the old ways but there's always room for something borrowed and something new. Creating our own family traditions becomes even more important when the parents have different backgrounds.
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There's a golden moment in the whirlwind of holiday preparations when everything "clicks", when you get infected with the spirit of the season. For some people it's making a wish list or decorating, for others it's buying that first, perfect gift. For my sister, watching "White Christmas" a few times usually does the trick.
For the past few years I've been a veritable humbug despite the fact that I'm trying my best to do everything right. My daughter and I bake cookies; we sit around the fire playing board games and drinking eggnog; we sneak around wrapping gifts for the family. Aren't those the traditions we all enjoy?
Looking back, I can see that I'm not really doing it right, because my family has not yet mastered the "choosing of the tree".
As a child, I remember begrudgingly bundling up to schlep across the road with my parents and brother to cut down the one tree we all agreed was "perfect". This was always a short, fat cedar that looked as sad and ornery as I felt when the needles pricked my fingers and the sap stuck in my hair. As the youngest it was my honor to add the final touch to the lowly evergreen, symbol of eternal life-I got to throw on the icicles. But as many handfuls of bling as I tossed on that tree it still looked like a crappy little cedar. I begged my parents to buy a "real" tree but it was a luxury we just couldn't afford.
These days my daughter and I take a little fake tree out of the box, put it together, place it on a table, add a few ornaments-and we're done. Because, you know, real trees are messy, and you have to water them, and the cats play with the balls and scratch open the gifts, etc.
But I know they're just the pathetic excuses of a lazy Grinch, along with "we have a tiny house", and "your father's family did not celebrate Christmas."
But my family does celebrate Christmas and Chinese New Year, and I might as well commit. So this year, we shall have my dream tree, even if I have to move the furniture to the back yard. We'll go to the parking-lot tree stand in early December and pick out a massive, well-rounded Douglas fir, and we'll take an entire evening to decorate it with popcorn garlands, and pictures, and sparkling matchy-matchy ornaments just like I've always wanted. But it won't feel like Christmas until my daughter throws gobs of tacky icicles all over it. I already know it will be the most beautiful tree ever.
May you enjoy the gifts of the season, moonlight sparkling on snow, twinkling lights warming a dark room, and the laughter of children.
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Holiday Traditions
 What are your favorite holiday traditions? (Any holiday, not just Christmas!) What is it about the tradition that you love? The taste, the smell, the sense of fellowship or something else?
njames51 
Good newsletter about Perfection. Last paragraph, especially. We are not our material things. I'm glad I have been able to get rid of alot of material stuff and have a simple life. But, of course, I have to be mindfull every day that I will never be perfect. And that's o.k.
shepherd46
This is a wonderful article! Your line, "It doesn't have to be done perfectly--it just has to be done" has given me a "freeing" feeling--a feeling that I can just let the perfection go! I love this article!
I want to write again and say how much this phrase has changed my life---"It doesn't have to be done perfectly--it just has to be done."
I am looking at everything in a whole new light..
Thank you.
Toni Star
alfred booth, wanbli ska
An excellent write today, in spite of your procrastination. This is an article we all need to read daily in order to indeed remind ourselves that the goal is "the best we can do today" and not the ever illusive "perfection." Steve Jobs may have seemed like he lived a perfect life, but cancer took it's toll much too soon. But if we emulate his life, we will strive not for perfection but living life to its fullest and always daring to set out on a path to realize our dreams.
cfwriter01 
To Be Perfect or Not?
I would say the art of being perfect is a far fetched idea. It puts one at an odd angle where you are having to criticize yourself, put yourself down, hate yourself, change yourself constantly in every way, obsessing about yourself negatively, puts focus on yourself, and berate yourself to do better. This act of self destruction de-humanizes yourself where all you see about yourself is these negatives and the constant focus to better yourself. This pathway of perfection really is not a path of re-discovering who you really are, however, it is a pathway based on perfecting yourself to the nth degree. So which is it, to be perfect or not? I venture to say NOT.
Author KSmith
This is an interesting statement:Perfection can lead to procrastination.
mosescode
Perfection, is a wonderful word like a few others I can think of. Let's look a truth for a moment, it alludes is all if we don't know where to find it. Perfection may have similar properties about its self. Truth maybe only found in your heart after the search of anything that may be significant. Yet perfection, is gained in the search too, an achieved; ie: let's say you joined a club! Also, you wanted to become popular, yet giving speechs or reports to show your intent certainly your involvement. Most of your life you've hated too have to give a speech, yet this is the best way to get noticed that you can think of. So you set out to give your first speech, with knees knocking and, Butterfliles churning in your stomach. Your first speech may have been poorly given, yet the more you do them the greater the perfection.
Mr.Ice
Hello Wit~Chi Woman:
I have mixed emotion on the thought of Spiritual: Perfection Hurts they are vie my ideas. Furthermore, how can we have words and
then discount them? Every meaning of the word
Perfection seems to imply it is attainable.
I think Wit~Chi Woman you may be to subjective
with the word and not the meaning. First, life is perfect and that stands to reason if life is perfect it cannot have imperfect beings.
Second, Nature is perfect, however, perfection is
not the controlling factor. Yet being perfect
Is the ability to over come imperfections?
Third, being perfect there should never be a
problem, the problem is not wanting it Perfectly done. Four, you said perfect is the let down, and Five,and lastly - We are marvelously created whereby excellence, perfection, and people of Pure Light is have The Essence Spiritually confined yet defined in grace.
The Iceman.
Karen
Thank you for featuring my poem. I am grateful.
The-Delf
To the editor of this months spiritual newsletter
((Perfectly-flawed))
The most evolved, spiritually, have a fault-line!
Every pearl becomes a picture of perfection, via, the constant pain and suffering that the sand grinds them into and every baby born naturally, comes from the very edge of our intense and "not so really perfect", try, cry and "kick-you-in-the-head", experience!
The perfection is in the feeling ...
((Purrr-flect))
When it feels like heaven - it is heaven!
Such as, the relief one feels when hot feet are dunked in cold water? The utter perfection of a reflection, when you see your smile, on the face of your grandchild! And guess what else? Um= I am 36-27-36, so am I perfect? I also have a nice white smile and long blond hair, down to my bum, just like Marcia from the Brady bunch, but I also had 5 children pass through my body!
Look in the mirror a bit more, to find your spiritual core, or a door=(Adore) And you will find, via your mind, "you are Gods kind"
Zeke
The only perfection I see lies in my Creator and God.
gautam
absolutelyperfectionhasits ownbeautifulcharm:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Light
Perhaps a better question would be to ask, "Are the imprfections I see a product of judgement?" There are reasons behind all that we experience in life. If we could know all these reasons, would we judge anything we see? Could imperfection be the illusion?
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Spiritual: November 29, 2011 Issue [#4741]
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