By now, if you're like me, you just noticed that - Yikes! - Thanksgiving's this week.  And just days later, if you celebrate it, eight nights of Hanukkah and then Christmas.  Since our family collectively celebrates all three, the merry chase has begun!

The holidays are a natural time to ask ourselves what makes us happy and then gear our preparations around the answer.

Those who responded  to last month's Holiday Survey provide some insights.

Some exercises offered in a Harvard professor's book called Happier might give you even more ideas. So might the perspective of a New England minister, whose blog post, written shortly before her death, provides comfort that really, we can never "get it all done."

If all else fails, follow my lead and "fax" yourself 10 years ahead for some advice from your "future self," as I did in my last column. If you find yourself this holiday season in one of those transition times, between the end of one thing and the beginning of the next, an online column I wrote for The Transition Network might be just the thing.

Here's to a holiday season filled with your own brand of joy, whatever you're celebrating and whatever stage of life you're in.


                                            Pat