Every year as Capricorn season arrives with bells on, so does our awareness of the passage of time, along with just how tightly we’ve scheduled our self, how pressured we feel by our numerous commitments, and how many hungry mouths and empty bank accounts we’ve got to satisfy. This sobering influence, on the holiday known for its generosity and good cheer, creates that unique schizophrenia characterizing “the holidays”. I don’t know about you but many of my childhood Christmas memories involve experiences of extreme stress and wondrous magic, abundance and lack, side by side. Holidays are crazy-magic like that.

One of the pleasures of being an adult is being able to author my own experience. And so, after years of enjoying the holiday season a lot less than I’d like, I decided to take the old goat by the horns, so to speak. Eyeing the season’s intense astrological weather (first Venus, then Mercury and Sun forming a t-square to Uranus-Pluto) I decided to commit to less. I decided to not send out Christmas cards. I decided to allow my husband and stepdaughters to prepare the holiday meal. In short, I decided to attempt to pre-empt crazy.

This New Moon falls at zero degrees Capricorn, marking a new beginning for dedicating our self to goals that matter. With Sun, Moon, Venus Mercury and Pluto all answering to Saturn (now changing signs), before we make our list of resolutions, it behoves us to look both forward and back, to clearly assess how we’re spending our energy. Capricorn rules the boundaries of time and space. Our life energy is the biggest resource we have, far more valuable than money. What pressures can you ease and loosen in your own life? If you feel overcommitted, overworked and undernourished in the fun department, with Saturn’s imminent change of guard, it’s a good time to jettison obligations that no longer make sense for you. Meanwhile, Vesta, keeper of all we hold sacred, also in Capricorn asks: Are you spiritually aligned with your life’s work? Or is the modern mantra of workaholism and ambition disconnecting you from this?

With my book coming out in January, I’ve been thinking a lot about consciously choosing to have experiences of peace (not stress). Uranus transiting my Aries Moon has been an emotionally enlightening but demanding time requiring far more time for inner work than I’d anticipated needing. And I know it will continue. For about the next three months, the Uranus-Pluto square is applying to exact -which means it’s still gonna keep getting worse before it gets better. We’re witnessing this in our larger world, if not our personal one. It’s become harder to stay in our ego shells when the world is on fire. This is a time of feeling into our humanity. This includes: all the ways we hurt, feel terrible and shut down. We want the freedom to author our own experience, but to do that we’ve got to get out from under the logjam we’re operating under.

Uranus will move forward at this New Moon, too, inciting the freedom-loving Trickster spirit/sprite/rebel in each of us, asking: Can you move forward and do that which you must do, with more freedom and authenticity? Uranus is like a circuit breaker, guiding us to envision and then act on the radical adjustments we need to make in order to be freer, saner, happier. In the tarot deck, pattern-breaking, awakening Uranus is depicted as an old stone tower (the old guard, traditions) set aflame, with tiny people leaping out the window. At this time, a little conscious rebellion is in order – though with our ingenuity, forethought and self-knowledge we can avoid high drama, and casualties. Try turning an old tradition on it’s head, or deciding not to play into the same old holiday family of origin dynamics pattern. For instance, the minute the heat gets turned up at the holiday table, you might excuse your self by saying, “I suddenly feel the need to take a shower”. If  you need trickster inspiration, check out my Saturnalia ritual.

This New Moon heralds a time to reach deep down into the touchstone of our very being. Our fundamental genuineness, and our ingenuity, will be tested. To locate our authority, in who we are and what we do, not in what other people tell us we must be or do. To hold those we love close to us. To honor our self, and one another. To remember what’s eternally important, not just what’s important today. These actions are not only a cure for overwhelm, pressure and the holiday blues, but a Christmas lesson we can take into the New Year. And if we can do that… the magic of the season will take care of itself.