How can I be myself while also relating to rituals I may or may not find nourishing?

There is a way I feel culturally incompetent at this time of year more than all the culturally incompetent times. And for me, that is saying a lot. There are so many moments.

For example, I have complex feelings around holiday cards. On one hand, I enjoy the cards we receive, the photos and updates from the folks who send them, and the colorful display of them in our kitchen. I admire and admittedly don’t quite understand the amount of effort they must take: how do family members even all get into one photo where there is another person to take the shot, everyone is looking at the camera, let alone smiling with eyes open, and not showing the stains they likely have on their shirts? How does a family have the people power to remember to take those photos, select them, arrange them nicely as squares on a page, find something appropriate to say on the card, get them printed, and somehow have time left over to address and stamp each card? How do people even have others addresses anymore? This must be a non-neurodivergent practice. Astounding.

My daughter would like to make holiday cards. Each year, I feel totally blank. We are Jewish. The exchange of cards this time of year does not feel culturally accurate. And yet, maybe it would be nice to do, if someone else made it happen.

At the heart of the above question is a processing issue. Am I doing the thing that is prescribed from outside of me, the tradition, the expectation, or the ritual, or am I doing the thing that arises from within me, from my own sensations, my own meaning, my own authenticity?

A (Jewish Buddhist) friend of mine does a wonderful version of holiday cards: she sends a New Year’s card with her own quirky art on it, after the new year. Usually the message is authentic and heartfelt. I feel contacted by her with her card. And yet it is technically a holiday card.