By Qarol Price
So! It is January and the curtain has closed on Johnston County’s 2025 Christian holiday season. After the festive lights have been extinguished and the seasonal tunes have fallen silent, how do you feel?
For these last three months, we have been invited to connect with the customary seasonal feelings. In October, Halloween had us flirting with fear; in November, Thanksgiving awakened gratitude; and in December, Christmas inspired compassion. Taken together, these three months sketch a kind of moral pilgrimage through emotional well-being. (Tradition always has something up its sleeve.)
Halloween is a festival that renders our fears into something we can tame and even laugh at. It is a time to face our anxieties, not suppress them. By transforming the macabre into merriment, we learn that fear is part of life — but not our master. Understanding and mastering our fears is by far one of the most important lessons in life. Halloween reminds us to summon the courage to reckon with this mischievous player in our lives.
Thanksgiving observance is homage to the transformative power of gratitude. In pausing to give thanks, we acknowledge that the world, despite its shadows, is not barren of goodness. We take stock of the folks that have supported us, the blessings that have surprised us, and the comforts that have sustained us.
By shifting attention away from what is lacking toward that which is abundant, we increase our contentment and optimism. That way, little room is left for any toxic brooding. Not only does counting our blessings brighten our outlook, but it inspires us to bless others in turn. Now that’s making way for all that comfort and joy!
Come Christmastime, after naming our fears and counting our blessings, we can look around with clearer eyes and respond to the needs of others. Having compassion for one’s fellow man becomes an out-growth of one’s moral maturity as it has been developed through the artful repetition of these holiday traditions.
Yes, they are certainly occasions for celebration; but they really pack a punch when they function as cultural engines that carry meaning, memory and moral orientation across generations. And with perennial regularity, holiday traditions ensure the development and practice of core values.
Now, speaking of tradition, you may have noticed that I’ve departed from the usual format of this column. The topic was to be Johnston County Public Schools character education trait of the month for January: dependability. Mind you, I still plan to continue spotlighting the respective 12 traits each month to aid in the awareness, development and practice of our community’s core values, but from time to time, I deem it worthwhile to take poetic liberties with a field so vast of content and importance that it demands a more comprehensive perspective.
However, in closing I will give a shout-out to dependability by acknowledging its role in promoting comfort and joy to a life. As we will see throughout the years in our study of virtue, the common goal among these traits is to cultivate comfort and joy for ourselves and others.
Dependability defines our holidays and traditions as pillars of reassurance. The world can feel harshly unpredictable, yet traditions always arrive on schedule. Holidays, rituals, and the simple customs of family life absorb our attention, calling us back to what is rooted and reliable. Dependability lives within them: the same hymns sung each winter; the same stories told around a table; and the same passions of the heart being practiced with mindful reverence These repetitions are not stale — they are stabilizing. The reliable recurrence of these holidays can aid one in becoming a man (or woman) of all seasons.
Next month: Fairness
