By Rona Cherry

For the fortunate —and we wish all of you good fortune beyond measure —the holiday season is the most loving time of year. Our hearts open up to the free flow of kindness, affection, compassion, forgiveness ... all the virtues that ennoble us as a species. If we’re lucky (and we realize that not all people are), we live at year’s end filled with hope, filled with love, filled with power for doing good. We live the way we were intended to live. 

Then comes January.  

The holiday lights come down. On the street, we walk past dried-out Christmas trees and orphaned strands of tinsel.  And when the discarded props of the season disappear from view, our loving, gentle nature so often disappears with them.

But we believe it doesn’t have to be that way. So here are four ways to keep your holiday spirit alive long after the snows have melted, through the dog days of summer, until the leaves begin to turn again, and the loving spirit of the holidays visits our desperately needy world anew year’s end filled with hope, filled with love, filled with power for doing good. We live the way we were intended to live.