Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

It's almost the time of the holidays. It's the winter holidays here in the Northern Hemisphere,

and I am so happy you're all here as part of your holiday season. The holiday season is supposed to be so

sublime and so joyous that it's often incredibly miserable for many of us. I know you know

what I'm talking about or you wouldn't be here in the gathering room because the people who show up

in the gathering room are the kind of people who try super

hard and take things hard when they don't go right, especially at the holidays. So we're always

trying to make the holidays perfect. And then if it's not perfect, we tend to get somewhat downhearted

or even very downhearted. This is a common thing when I used to be writing for

Oprah magazine or a lot of magazines actually. The holiday season was always a time when the editors

would say we need to talk to people about their misery because it's accentuated at the holiday

time because we're supposed to be happy.

In fact, we're supposed to do so many things at holiday time that the supposed to's

can start to really ruin our lives. So right now, I want to talk about having a really

truly, wonderfully perfect holiday season, and it's

absolutely possible.

I've been doing it for years.

I had horrible holidays for a brief period of my life, loved it as a child, not so great

as a young adult.

Then I figured it out a little bit, and I've been having great holidays ever since, and I wanted

to share with you

the way to do it. So here's what I realized because I've got a two-year-old around this Christmas.

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