Hi, this is against everyone with Connor Abeeb, a podcast featuring my conversations with

countercultural figures and presenting complex, philosophical, spiritual, and political ideas in an

engaging and accessible way. Well, friends, what a year. And now the closing, the holidays.

Holidays put us in touch with ancient people.

I love that about the holidays.

For thousands of years, people have celebrated these days and times and had overlapping

rituals.

There's a way in which time becomes transparent to us through the holidays and a way in which we unravel

our histories with a holiday. With Christmas, one of those unravelings has to do with experiencing

childhood.

Among everything else at Christmas is, it's a time of celebrating a child and childhood.

I never really celebrated Christmas as an adult.

Well, for some of my adult life, but my mother died when I was 23, about to be 24, and, you know,

that kind of takes the wind out of the holidays. And I did have holidays with various people over the years, but it never really felt like that kid thing, you know.

This year, however, something's changed.

My boyfriend is really, really into holidays.

It's also Ireland is really into the Christmas and winter holidays.

And there's this real family warmth aspect here that even in the US,

it just doesn't feel the same.

I think it's gotten me really enthused about things that I might have thought were cheesy.

And also a lot of my sort of changing ideas about who I am and what I want in my life,

which maybe you've been listening to over the other episodes of the show, especially recent ones

...