376 — Everything You Know About Holidays is a Manufactured Lie With Lara Day

Dec 16, 2025

Lara Day, creator of the 13 Sacred Nights Oracle and teacher of qigong, delves into the hidden truths behind popular holidays. She reveals how many traditions have been manipulated by cultural shifts and commercial interests, transforming sacred practices into mere rituals for consumerism. Lara discusses the origins of Halloween and Thanksgiving, exposing their true narratives and meanings. With personal anecdotes, she encourages listeners to reclaim their holiday experiences, aligning them more closely with nature and genuine connection.

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INSIGHT

Holidays Shape Collective Reality

Holidays act as collective molds that shape culture, not just mirrors reflecting it.
Lara Day explains a four-layer transformation: pagan nature rites, Christian overlay, Victorian domestication, then commercialism.

INSIGHT

Four-Layer Holiday History

Most American holidays went through pagan, Christian, Victorian, and commercial layers over centuries.
That layering explains why holiday meanings diverged from nature-based origins into shopping and sugar rituals.

ADVICE

Choose How You Celebrate

Pause and consciously choose how you celebrate holidays instead of following inherited scripts.
Decide what is sacred to you and what you're willing to sacrifice to honor it.

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How would you feel if everything you knew about the various popular holidays throughout the year were lies manufactured to divert your attention from their very real and sacred meaning? Depending on who you are, that knowledge could be revelatory or very disturbing and controversial…

Lara Day explores the not-so-great truth behind the various popular holidays many of us celebrate, how they evolved into opportunities to control you and what you can do to reclaim those sacred practices this week on Spirit Gym.

Learn more about Lara’s work and classes at her website and on social media via Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.

For Spirit Gym listeners: Save $100 on a Neurogenic Qigong session with Lara (her unique blend of qigong healing and tension and trauma releasing neurogenic tremor work) by letting her know you listened to this podcast! (Special offers from Spirit Gym guests are time-sensitive and at their discretion to redeem after 30 days.)

Timestamps

3:27 A new publisher and important additions to Lara’s 13 Sacred Nights Oracle deck.

8:10 “Maybe it’s time to consciously choose how we celebrate our holidays.”

11:17 The four-layer cake of bad changes to our holidays.

23:52 Why do many people get so defensive about their manufactured holiday traditions?

31:18 The trick or treat origins of Halloween.

40:54 Lara and her daughter have created their own Halloween ritual: An altar for celebrating dead relatives and loved ones.

49:11 The origins of Thanksgiving in America, thanks to Sarah Josepha Hale.

56:50 Open your heart with this very simple practice from Paul.

1:02:43 Cooking.

1:10:36 Why was Christmas once outlawed in the 17th century?

1:19:53 “We were worried that if we told them we knew, maybe they'd think there's no point in having Christmas anymore.”

1:24:45 You can reset the Christmas season for your family and celebrate it your way.

Resources

13 Sacred Nights Oracle: A Yearly Solstice Tradition by Lara Day

Adyashanti

Find more resources for this episode on our website.

Music Credit: Meet Your Heroes (444Hz), Composed, mixed, mastered and produced by Michael RB Schwartz of Brave Bear Music

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