Why Do We Celebrate?

I want to wish everyone in Canada and the USA

 a very happy and safe holiday celebration this week! 

I am going to the lake for two days of relaxing and then for Canada Day, this Wednesday, I will be at work from noon to 8 pm. We are having a little Canada Day party in the afternoon. Providing programs and celebrations at a personal care home is extremely challenging right now during this time of quarantine, social distancing, and so many other changes and worries. We are trying to gather people in very small groups, and then we try and position people with some distance between them.

Previously our Canada Day Parties at the personal care home have been huge outdoor events for residents and families complete with a hired musician, food, and decorations and lots of FUN. We always had a huge turnout. This year - What to do? We are setting up the patio and decorating in Red and White, but we are handling it like a mini “come and go” open house style event for the residents so that we only have a few people gathered at a time. It is a significant change and challenges our creativity.

This year our usual ways of celebrating have been so overwhelmingly disrupted.  We all want our social contacts to return to what it was before the pandemic, but in the meantime, we still want to share our lives with each other in some way. 

What I am impressed with is how resilient people have been. We are, indeed, finding new ways to celebrate and mark special events. My niece’s husband secretly contacted her Facebook friends and arranged for everyone to drive past and honk. He even surprised her by decorated their front yard.  She was thrilled with this new version of a birthday celebration.  I was pleased to discover that I could attend live-streamed service from my local church this past Easter from my own home.

We are communicating with others and having events on Skype, Zoom or Facetime. People from all over the world are participating in activities in new ways. Some times these changes have been very positive.

I love celebrations!

 I even love those days when unusual celebrations occur and sometimes I try and incorporate them into my home life and into my work life at the personal care home. Just to give one random example- Did you know that today, June 29th, is the International Day of the Tropics, which is sponsored by the United Nations? It is kind of the perfect day to buy a tropical plant, have a sweet beachy drink. Click to learn a bit about the fascinating biodiversity of the tropics. Why do we set up these differnt kinds of events and what is the point of it?

 

What do we celebrate?

We celebrate or commemorate the important markers of our lives. We celebrate our birthdays and commemorate the passing of loved ones. We remember anniversaries. There are special feelings of pride and acknowledgment of your capibilites on the day you get your driver’s licence on the day you graduate from school or when you get that longed-for job or be a winner in that major sports competition.

We celebrate the community acknowledgment of Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Mother’s Day, Fathers Day and many other days with big events or family gatherings.  We sometimes do a lot of consumer purchasing to get the right décor, clothing and treats and even cards to share. 

Each culture has its unique occasions and ways that they celebrate these days.  It might be hoisting a beer stein for Oktoberfest, or it might be watching a dragon dance for Chinese New Year.  These celebrations reflect the history, culture and beliefs and geography of a place and a people. It is a way that a group defines itself and binds itself together as a group. It is a way to remember the past traditions of their people and to teach its youth to be proud of their heritage and to continue it into the future.

These special days and moments are centred around universal human experiences. We all experience loss, sadness, fear, accomplishment, and we all look for love, peace, joy, and success. When we act to notice and mark these events and moments, we find meaning in what is happening to us. The sorrowful and the joyful can be shared and let us gain validation for what has happened and our feelings about it. As a group, we can offer each other solace in difficult times, and we can provide practical support too. We can even create a force for change by acknowledging the importance of what has happened.

Back to why do we celebrate?

We have fun and excitement, and we make special memories

What is life without a little joy and laughter? Human being’s health and well being are dependent on having a bit of fun and expressing ourselves.

We bond with others and become part of a broader community.

People need a community and a sense of culture and identity. We need to have the physical support of others, but we also need to have people to share in who we are and have things in common with us. 

We discover more about our own identity and learn what is important to us.

When you celebrate a rite of passage, it can change who you are and in a very real way how you see yourself.   My granddaughter just graduated from grade 6 this past week. She was a little kid and a member of her old school. When she returns to school next term, it will be a new school. It will no longer be the elementary school where she played during recess. It will be a junior high with new expectations, and there will be new social and extracurricular groups for her. Retirement is a big change too. We often describe ourselves by our jobs and our workplace. After you celebrate your retirement, you will redefine who you are and look at new possibilities.

It reflects our growth as people and our changing lives.

Our personal journey is marked by baby showers, births, baptisms, weddings, educational completion and all those other life events. Eventually, there will come the time of our death and commemoration of who we were and of our beliefs.  

Through our lives, we define what kind of person we are, we look at our roles in our communities and families, and where we belong and where we can make a difference. Our special days and events let us mark and confirm what these events mean to us as individuals and as a society.

Lets make this Summer's celebrations fun, thoughtful and meaningful despite the challenges we are facing in our world today.

Have a wonderful Canada Day and a fantastic Fourth of July.

Make some great memories!

Take Good Care of Yourselves

This is a time in our world where so many of us are feeling lost, helpless, and unsure about what we can or should do. We, as individuals, need to find a way to meet our own basic needs before we truly are able to give our best to help heal our society.
People need to take better care of themselves. The question is, how do we do that?

" I don't have time, I am not feeling great right now, I am too busy taking care of everyone else. I don't have the right supplies, I need to work, I need to just spend all my time on my computer or phone". 

The list of reasons used to put your own real needs last is enormous. Have you heard about the procedure of putting your oxygen mask on yourself first during an emergency so that you can help others? We need to do that in our daily life so that we can keep going ourselves and be there to help others be well. I'll be the first to admit that I have in the past and still continue to struggle with taking the time and focusing on what I need at the moment and then to follow through and meet those needs. 

Through my various health struggles, I have learned that you start with ONE step at a time and build on what you learn and accomplish. I want to try concentrating on one topic or idea a week and try and incorporate it into my life. I know that it can take a long time to truly master some goals. Still, I am sure that even small efforts with thinking, learning and implementing will lead to positive changes. Maybe something that I share will inspire you!

I'm hoping others will join me in this journey so watch for "Take Good Care of Yourself Sundays." See what changes I am making to hopefully increase my ability to cope in such a challenging time and to continue trying to lead a healthy life.

Recreation therapy and other disciples break up our activities and our therapeutic goals into several categories of health that are intended to create a holistic approach to health and wellness. I sometimes use these as labels for my blog posts, and I also want to use them as ways to organize the topics and ideas I plan to investigate and work on.

Physical 

Social

Emotional/ Mental Health

Cognitive/ Intellectual Health

Spiritual Health 

Sometimes also considered are  

Environmental Health 

Occupational Health

Financial Wellness

Do you have any particular challenges you are facing? Do you have favourite ideas for self-care? 

See you this Sunday for the first 

"Take Good Care of Yourself Sunday."

I had prepared a post about goals and planning but when I saw this TED Talk by Matt Cutts.  I thought this seemed like an interesting idea that I wanted to explore further.
I had made an effort through December to post daily. It did not happen.  I did post more frequently and I posted a lot more than before about my love of holidays and  I shared a lot more about my everyday life during December. I feel like that was a positive change. It also reminded me how much I like taking pictures and blogging.

This Ted Talk did not strike me as being just about goal setting or doing what is needed or even particularly self improvement. What struck me is that this might be more of a challenge to try something new and push through our comfort levels. If you give a project/change a try for 30 days and find you don't enjoy it... then you just learned something more about yourself and can move on. Maybe you will discover that you can say with pride "I did it!" even if you never want to do it again. Maybe you will find a new passion you want to pursue.  I love the idea of taking something I have tried briefly in the past and devoting a month to take it to the next level.

I do want to add that even with a one month project I still recommend using SMART goals. Check out the link to my blog post on the topic.

What shall we choose to try in next month?

Electric Museum at Christmas Time

Our Girl Guide Unit- Pathfinders went to an interesting museum for our Holiday Party Windup. The Girls ran around the museum doing a trivia challenge in order to win a little prize and they learned a few things about electricity in the process. Afterward we went out for treats at a nearby restaurant and the girls filled up on steaming hot cocoa and yummy desserts.

The Electric Museum is part of an old electrical substation that is sill functioning and is a nice little museum for people to visit. Touring the museum is free and run by volunteers. This time of year something kind of magical happens. They have an annual exhibit called "All that Glows: Then and Now". It show a glimpse into the evolution of holiday lighting through the years.



I took some pictures that I am sure you will find interesting, What kind of tree and lighting do you remember from you childhood? What kind of lighting would you enjoy having in your home now?
I love that whole kitchen scene. It is some odd spot between what I loved when I was little and we have a lot of similar things to what you see in the picture at our cottage. The other fun part is the outside lighting is fairly extensive with a giant tree and some of it is coordinated with music on a radio station you can tune your car radio or devices on to.

Nativity Sets and Angels

I hope you enjoy these pictures of the Nativity Set collection and other items that we have in our living room display case. They are quite a variety of styles and ages, each with their own treasured stories. I have taken them, plus others in my collection to the Personal Care home where I work. I used them for a discussion group and they sure do bring back memories of their own to our residents too.

My Grandma Lisowski's miniature plastic Nativity scene. Only 4 and a half inches by 3 inches

My Grandma Lisowski's Statues of the Holy Family

Sweet little Angels

Some of our Willow Tree Angels

This lovely little carved egg was a gift from my daughter. It has such  fantastic details of the Nativity within.

Bob's Grandmother Cooper and Aunt Irene were in Egypt when Bob was only 7.  His grandmother bought him the fur toy camel. Sadly Bob's Grandmother died in a car accident in Egypt on this trip and we are glad to have this mementoes of her.

The metal camel was a prized possession of Aunty Irene, that she gifted to him when she moved into a retirement home.

Our 3 pewter Wise Men were purchased on a Christmas to the Max convention trip to California a few years ago.

Jim Shore collectable called "Landscape Sleeps".