⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🎅 Santa is Real: Exploring the profound impact of Santa Claus on our lives and imaginations. Read it here.

📋 Christmas List For Santa Claus: A touching poem prompting reflection on the passage of time. Watch it here.

🍄 The Mushroom Mysticism in Santa’s Origin Story: Discover the ancient rituals that may have shaped our beloved holiday figure. Read it here.

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🎇 Image of The Week

Landscape photographer Daniel Kordan captured this stunning image: “One incredible mountain in West Kazakhstan - Bokty. I shot it by accident when our car got stuck in the deep November mud after the rain and we needed to overnight just next to it. With the first rays touching the mountain and the sky it looked quite surreal.”

🎄 Merry Christmas

This is the first time an edition of Down The Rabbit Hole has fallen on Christmas Day, giving me the chance to wish you all a Merry Christmas for the first time.

As we age, it’s not uncommon for the magic of Christmas to drift into the distance. It can be hard to recapture the wonder of those early childhood moments.

I remember having a hard time sleeping on Christmas Eve. I remember sliding down the steps in my footie pajamas, wide awake despite the lack of sleep. I remember unwrapping gifts and playing with toys with my brother until all day.

It’s a time of year that carries such memories of concentrated happiness. I know that’s not true for all of us, and looking back can sometimes be challenging. That world doesn’t exist anymore—at least not outwardly—but the embers of Christmas magic still burn within me.

I hope the potent nostalgia this time of year stirs up can bring a smile to your face without being too distracted by how much things have changed over the years.

There are still aspects of your moments today that, in the years to come, you’ll likely look back on with fondness. I hope some Christmas magic finds it’s way to shine through to you today.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

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🌱 The Problem of Your Potential

Take note of this wisdom from Christopher D. Wallis:

“What exactly is this best version of themselves that people want to be? All too often, it's a socially conditioned figment of their imagination that is seen as preferable to the psyche and personality they have now. We picture ourselves as the character in a movie who overcomes all odds to become highly successful or highly skilled, regardless of how we started. Or, we imagine the possibility that we could, at some point in the future, consistently be as good and kind and loving as we were on our best day ever. Then we call these imagined possibilities our "potential" or our "best self." But you see the problem? If you think this way, you are creating a situation in which you almost constantly fail to live up to how you think you should be, necessitating some version of self-hatred as a result. Ironically, believing that you are not as you should be drains you of the very life-energy that would otherwise allow you to contribute to the world.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Chronocentrism: the assumption that certain time periods (typically the present) are better, more important, or a more significant frame of reference than other time periods, either past or future.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked link from a previous edition of 🌀🐇

2 Worlds, 1 Brain: The Work of Iain McGilchrist

The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist is a magnificent book. In it, he explores the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain in unprecedented depth, gradually revealing the pitfalls of a predominantly rational, linear approach to understanding the world.

Many people have heard the idea that the left hemisphere is logical and the right hemisphere is creative. This is a myth. You actually need both hemispheres to reason. You need both hemispheres to imagine.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t very real differences.

In a lecture delivered to the Royal Society of Arts, McGilchrist offers a more nuanced description of their respective functions:

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