Holiday stress and holiday depression can be relieved by focusing on three interrelated areas where stress and depression are manifested.
- physical/behavioral
- mental/emotional
- spirit/soul.
A Force of Nature
We can begin to understand holiday stress and depression by looking at some circumstances that are out of our control. We need to look at what is not personal, first. As we distinguish what is not in our control we can see a clearer path forward.
For example, this is a time of nature’s longest nights and darkest days here in the northern hemisphere. We must adapt and let go to this huge natural phenomena taking place both literally and symbolically. We are affected at very subtle physical levels, emotional levels and at the level of the spirit/soul when in this much darkness. Why wouldn’t we be?
How we relate to the depressed feelings and the stressful feelings is the name of the game. Just as how we relate behaviorally to the dark winter days and nights makes all the difference in the world.
Healing Holiday Stress and Depression 
There are three areas that we can work to effect change in dealing with depression and the winter blues, blacks and yellows and reds: 1. physical/behavioral, 2. mental/emotional and 3. spirit/soul.
1. Physical/behavioral:
“As we know, exercise is one of the best interventions for depression but exercise in the winter time needs to be thought through. When it is cold outside it can even be difficult to take a walk or easily get to a yoga class, exercise gym, or indoor swimming pool. But we’ve got to do something!
“Any exercise is good exercise” when it come to depression(sort of). Therefore, we need to ask ourselves, “What physical activity of all my possibilities is the most fun?” Then do it. This can be anything that you will do that is physical. Such as, vigorous vacuuming, dance like crazy, push ups, yoga.
Some people have found support through seasonal affective disorder lights which mimic sunlight. If it works for you, great!
Others, need medications that can be reduced or stopped when it is no longer needed in the spring and summer. I go into further detail about medication in some other articles. It can really help for some, but for others the side effects are too much of a trade off.
Diet is like exercise, we have to do something with the amount of certain foods. Amount, amount, amount is the magic formula. The holiday season is usually the time to take it to the limit. We all know, too much alcohol, sugar and fat just does not help with depression. We would like it to but it doesn’t.” from a previous post; seasonal affective disorder
2. Mental/emotional: 
We can reduce mental and emotional stress by perceiving situations as they are. Mistaken perceptions add unnecessary stress on top of a truly stressful situation. Here are four common mistakes of perception. This was taken from a previous post on Holiday Stress.
Perceiving (seeing) a situation worse than it actually is.
This is an exaggerated reaction to circumstances and feelings. It causes racing thoughts, flooded feelings, and sometimes disconnected or fragmented feelings. This is stress.
Writing helps. Meditation helps. Naming and feeling the basic stress, even saying it out loud to yourself or to someone else is useful. As simple as, “I’m am anxious I will buy someone the wrong gift”. “I am afraid I will get depressed this year.” “I am anxious that……”.
Perceiving a simple social interchange or mis-communication can trigger a huge reaction within us. My reaction of fear, anger and confusion can become unmanageable.
Examples of perceiving the basic stress:
“I have so much to do this holiday season and if I do not get it all done I will let people down and that would be unbearable.”
Being everything to everyone is unnecessary stress.
“He/she will reject me because of what I said or did and I am too afraid to talk about it.”
Simply ask a question to clear up any doubt in communication with others. “What did you mean by that?”
To apologize or to check something out with another provides relief.
Secondly, Perceiving a situation less risky than it is which causes stress in the future.
This could be any form of ignoring or repressing feelings and intuitions that are trying to warn us of over-extending ourselves beyond healthy stress. The illusion is mistaken or exaggerated capabilities.
For example, biting off a bigger chunk than one can chew(an illusion), such as getting too far in debt or committing to more projects than one can actually accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. Even eating and drinking to extreme can be a form of ignoring and repressing stress that needs identifying.
In this case, the image of the rope and snake are in the opposite position. I need to see that some situations can hurt me and others close to me. “It actually is a snake and I ignored it. I should have been more afraid. Now I have over committed myself to something”.
“I do not feel up to the holidays this year. I have been sick and my work has been demanding but I’m going to push through it. I would rather do that than tell my family that I need to stay home or I can only stay for part.”
Expressing your limits of what you can and cannot do provides relief from stress, even if there is guilt to follow.
Third: a mis-perception of time and how long something actually takes to do or accomplish.
This is pretty simple. Things take as long as they take. If I want something different, it creates unnecessary stress.
Also, this mis-perception can be based on some “shoulds” that are in the darkness, not conscious. This is where stress builds.
“I should get what I want when I want it.”
“I should do this because other people want me to.”
“I should do more because it proves I am a good person.”
Fourth: Perceiving the natural and unexpected stresses that come with simply being alive.
These are the simple changes that happen to us that are out of our control; such as, life and it’s demands, sickness, old age and death.” from the post; Holiday Stress
3. Spirit/soul: 
Surrender and Letting go is Not giving up
This fourth perception points to a way of working with and surrendering to life’s demands instead of giving up. Surrender is relaxing into a given situation. We can practice relaxing our mind and heart before, during and after stressful times. Less resistance equals less stress.
This larger perspective and larger heart is a background that can hold and guide us. It can hold and guide us through the foreground of positive and negative, up and down. Holiday stress, holiday depression or simply holiday blues can be in our face, in the foreground. The background of an open mind and heart is where we can rest our soul to clarify what needs to be done with others and ourselves.
As a people we need to do something with dark and light feelings and experiences at the level of the spirit and/or soul.
As I pointed out earlier, we can do something to change our physical behavior that helps with dark feeling states. We can also change our perceptions to reduce unnecessary emotional stress and confused thinking. And, we can also work spiritually at the darkest time of the year. In fact it is the best time.
From the beginning men and women have had mythology, religion, and shamanism to face the darkest time of the year. Ancient tribes until now have ceremonies, images and celebrations to hold the contrast of the light in the darkness. Jesus was born, Buddha was enlightened and the Greek God Persephone made the decent into Hades and returned in the spring with peace and paradox.
Most spiritual traditions offer styles of prayer, meditation, and ceremonial acts of faith and surrender around the time of winter solstice. Usually there is a devotion to some spiritual teachings or beliefs, Gods or spirit guides. These various styles of practice or worship come with accompanying ceremonies in many traditional or creative forms.
Gratefulness and the Holiday Blues 
These practices and spiritual traditions in our history can give us a way to make sense out of the precious beauty of life with it’s complimentary pain and suffering. We can find our way by choosing various spiritual methods and attitudes that work for us and then do it.
For example:
What spiritual traditions or practices draw you in, lighten your spirit?
For example, many people are trying on several different traditions. One can feel Christian or Jewish and practice Japanese Zen and go to Native American sweat lodge ceremonies and do an Ayurvedic cleanse all at the same time. What traditions raise your spirits?
What practices do you gravitate toward?
For example, various practices will raise the spirit through prayer, meditation, ceremony, singing, chanting, fasting, study, psychotherapy, shamanic journeying, psychedelics, mysticism. etc. What practices brighten up the darkness for you?
What readings raise your spirit?
For example, this could be poetry, a sacred text, philosophy, psychology or mythology, the symbolism in fairytales, etc. Various perspectives can help relax the mind and gain a larger perspective and a softer heart.
To summarize:
Part 1: Distinguish what methods raise your spirit and satisfy your soul. And be clear about the one’s that do not.
Part 2: Then do it through the darkest months.
Part 3: Acknowledge what gets in the way of doing it.
For example: “I am afraid of doing what is good for me. My soul knows what’s best. I refuse to listen. What is that about?”
Part 4: That which gets in the way of connecting to spirit/soul needs to be surrendered, sacrificed or let go of to experience a relaxed mind and heart as a background to natural stresses in the foreground of our life.
Example Ceremony: Create a ceremony where you write down your blocks to this spiritual soulful part of life. Then burn them in a fire. Prayer, singing, chanting, silence, meditation can all help to enhance the power and significance of the ceremony. This can be done as a family, a couple or an individual. Everyone can be part of creating the structure of the ceremony.
Tending to the spirit and soul bridges the gap between gratefulness and the Christmas blues(burn out), hope and hopelessness, enlightenment and ignorance, independence and dependance, and death and life.
This background is there already. It does not have to be created but it does need to be experienced more and more.
“The nature of mind is not an individual’s possession and is not an individual. It is the nature of sentience itself and is the same for all sentient beings.” Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
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