Beth McDonald - The Alchemy of the 2025 Holiday Season

Beth McDonald Corporate Intuitive and Astrologer Beth McDonald Consulting 22 North Voluntario Street, Unit B Santa Barbara, CA 93103 805-708-2935 [email protected] www.bethmcdonaldconsulting.com https://www.facebook.com/BethMcdonaldConsulting The holiday season is always fraught, but this year is going to be very different, and people need spiritual food. Things are really different this year due to a number of factors. I feel the biggest ones are the surging poverty levels, political polarization, and the changes in our population. Around the population issues, as you know, originally my concerns have been the pressure that aging boomers put on their families, friends and neighbors. But now, the impacts of the ICE raids means that there is now the added complication of empty seats at family and community tables for completely different reasons than most of us are used to. This is particularly poignant for people like me and Eric – ICE has been raiding my neighborhood, especially my street every week. Eric saw a man get abducted my them at the gas station on Quinientos and Milpas during Fiesta. All of this will be even more impacted by the government shut down – I have a feeling this is going to go a while. Trump is kind of famous for it. He's had more shutdowns than most presidents, and he holds the record for the longest one which is 35 days. This one is clearly going to go longer than that. I truly feel (and hope) that it will be over before Thanksgiving, but traditionally it takes a long time for individuals, families, and organizations to feel normal again once it is over. So, this is going to cast a big shadow on the holiday season. So that's just the stuff on the surface Astrologically speaking, there's a lot of retrograde energy throughout the holiday season, which forces us to be more judicious and intentional in our thoughts, speech, and actions. Most of them are between now and Hanukkah on December 14. Having so many retrogrades will force us to address older issues. Fortunately, that bit straightens out by Christmas and New Year's, but it's definitely a factor. So, the issue before us is how to make the proverbial lemonade out of our lemons this year. To a certain degree, this is always the issue, but it's exponentially more of one now. So maybe the title of this one should be something like this, The Alchemy of the 2025 Holiday Season: How to make Magic out of the Mayhem.