Am I Lost This Christmas… or Finally Found?
This is not a story of blame, but of becoming.
There was a time when Christmas meant certainty.
Certainty of belief.
Certainty of tradition.
Certainty of who belonged and who did not.
I was raised Southern Baptist- in a world where faith was not only taught but enforced. I left that church at fifteen, not because I stopped believing in something greater, but because I watched love become conditional. A woman was asked not to return to the only church she knew because her former in-laws were elders and they felt she no longer belonged, because of her sins. In that moment, something cracked open inside me. I learned that faith without compassion is not true faith.
It’s all control dressed in scripture.
For many years after, I kept celebrating Christmas the way I was taught. Big gatherings. Lots of gifts. Beauty that leaned toward performance. Somewhere along the way, the meaning drained out, leaving behind obligation and expectation instead of warmth.
Now my life looks different.
My son is grown. His wife is strong in her Catholic faith, and together they are raising their children with room for curiosity alongside conviction. For this season, my grandchildren are part of my daily life, their laughter filling the rooms of my home. My parents live in another state. Only one sister lives close by. Much of the family structure I grew up with has dissolved, quietly and without ceremony.
I didn’t raise my son to believe in one thing. I raised him to believe in wonder, curiosity, and respect for all ways of understanding the world. In doing so, I found myself walking my own quiet path, learning from many traditions without needing to claim a single name for them.
People often ask, what do you believe? Do you believe in God?
Now that person would just get a meaningful smile and say I believe every religion should be respected. Because the truth is, I believe in something greater than what we can easily name. I believe in connection, in energy, in presence, in the unseen threads that move through our lives. I have experienced things I cannot fully explain, and I no longer feel the need to force them into one definition.
This Christmas, I feel… untethered.
And yet, I am surrounded by love.
I find myself asking questions I never allowed before.
Am I doing the right thing by still buying gifts for my grandchildren?
By letting them celebrate Christmas the way my husband and I always have?
Should I even celebrate at all?
The answer came quietly, not from doctrine, but from the space between moments.
Children do not absorb theology first.
They absorb tone.
They remember how a house feels.
How laughter sounds.
How generosity moves through a room.
How belonging settles into their bones.
What I am offering them is different; it’s a space they never have to pretend in. Unless that’s the game we are playing! 😉
I am not recreating any ancestors’ Christmas; I am transforming it. I am keeping the beauty without the performance, the gifts without the measuring of worth, the light without the hierarchy. I am allowed to keep what nourished me and release what wounded me.
Christmas, stripped of dogma, is simply a container. People fill it with different meanings. For some it holds Jesus, for others, abundance, maybe others, grief softened by twinkle lights.
For me, it now holds this:
Continuity without obligation.
Love without conditions.
Light without explanation.
Giving without proving.
Maybe I am not lost in belief.
Maybe I am standing between myths.
The old story no longer fits, and the new one has not yet been named. That space can feel hollow, especially in December. But it is also sacred.
If my grandchildren feel safe here, then something holy is happening.
If they feel seen, then something ancient is being honored.
If love flows freely without fear or shame, then this is a celebration worth keeping.
This Christmas, I am choosing presence over perfection.
Warmth over certainty.
Connection over creed.
And maybe that is what this Gypsy Soul has always known.
There is a reason I keep returning to the sound of my grandchildren laughing.
Laughter is not just joy. It is safety made audible.
When children laugh freely, it means they feel held. It means nothing is being asked of them in that moment. No belief to perform. No role to play. No part of themselves to hide.
Their laughter fills my home in a way nothing else can. It softens old edges. It loosens places in me that learned too early to stay guarded. When I laugh with them, something quiet and healing happens. Time slows. The past loses its grip. Love becomes simple again.
I don’t need to explain what I believe to deserve that sound. I don’t need to justify it or define it. Their laughter is enough.
If there is something sacred in this season for me, it is this.
A house that rings with laughter.
A heart that remembers how to laugh back.
And the knowing that joy, when shared, is a form of grace.
May this season be less about certainty and more about the quiet light that knows when to whisper and when to warm.
© 2025 Gypsy-Oracle®. All rights reserved.
Offered in light, not instruction.
