The Magic They Let You Believe In: Holiday Spells and Other Acceptable Delusions

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking tradition - I’m merely calling out the double standard. I love a good snow-dusted ritual as much as the next person. I’ll happily cozy up with a Hallmark movie, a cup of hot cocoa, and a predictable meet-cute between the small-town baker and the big-city executive who just discovered the meaning of Christmas. A gal can indulge, am I right?

We’ll toast to holiday magic like it’s a religion - string lights, cinnamon, and nostalgia so thick it could raise the dead (or at least Mariah Carey). But mention moon cycles or tarot, and suddenly you’ve joined a secret coven behind Hobby Lobby.

Holiday hearth with stockings and ornaments

What is Magic, Anyway?

Magic, at its core, is curiosity with conviction. It’s the same essence that faith once claimed - the kind that moves mountains, or at least makes you try. It’s the quiet belief that your energy, your words, your intention ripple outward into the world and change into something, however small.

The magic in question was never about pulling rabbits from hats (no shade to those that can - I'd love to learn how you do because honestly, how cool). It’s about realizing the hat was never empty.

The Acceptable Illusion

So why do we melt for “holiday magic” but wrinkle our noses at the real thing? Because one is easy to digest, and the other asks us to think.

“Holiday magic” is safe. It keeps you warm and docile, wrapped in tinsel and predictability. Real magic, though? That one whispers inconvenient truths: that power can live in your own hands. It’s not dangerous because it’s dark. It’s dangerous because it’s yours.

Control the narrative, control the magic. Keep the wonder, sell the version that fits neatly in a gift bag.

Then vs. Now

Once upon a time, magic was pracitcal. The healer grinding herbs for fever? Today she’s an herbalist or more likely, an “alternative wellness consultant.” The farmer reading clouds to predict rain? Now he’s a meteorologist, a modern oracle with a Doppler radar. We simply changed the language and called it progress.

Magic became medicine when we could patent it.

Ritual became habit when we could monetize it.

Wonder became data when we could track it.

The difference between a spell and a modern-day “miracle cream?” Tracked data and marketing. You can’t sell a cure-all; otherwise, you wouldn’t come back.

A modern-day witch, wrapped in a warm shawl and beanie, stands amidst snow-dusted evergreens, cradling a glowing orb that illuminates the serene winter night.

The Reputation Problem

Magic wasn’t demonized because it failed. It was demonized because it gave people, especially women, agency. The ability to influence outcomes without permission has always terrified institutions built on hierarchy.

Mother Shipton, the English prophetess who saw futures in storms and stars, was condemned as a witch because she dared to speak the truth before men had words for it.

Tituba, an enslaved woman in Salem, carried her ancestral traditions from Indigenous roots and her enslavement in the Barbados - her name became synonymous with hysteria.

And Hypatia, philosopher and mathematician of Alexandria, was torn apart by a mob for practicing what we now call science. A woman who understood the cosmos before men could measure it.

Three women, three centuries, three versions of the same fear: knowledge that couldn’t be controlled.

The Return of Wonder

Maybe Merlin isn’t waiting to reappear from some mist-soaked legend. Maybe Merlin is a metaphor, a reminder that wisdom, intuition, and wild belief are cyclical. Every few generations, the world forgets its wonder, and someone has to wake it up again.

Magic never left; it just got clever at disguises:

It’s in the perfectly timed song.

The stanger’s smile that unknots your chest.

The maniacle laughter of your littles, reminding you joy is pure and innocent.

That first sip of tea that warms your from the inside out.

The hug that hits you like cardboard wrapped in barbed wire; painful but necessary.

It’s in those moments when your reading lands, and your inner child and higher self lock eyes like, "told you so."

Call it kismet, divine timing, or the universe’s twisted sense of humor. It’s proof that the spark never went out - it’s just waiting for us to notice again.

A Challenge (or Maybe a Spell)

So where do you see magic?

In the flicker of candlelight? The way snow hushes the noise? The tiny miracles that keep finding you, even when you stop looking?

Maybe the real magic isn’t in turning frogs into princes, but in turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. In choosing to believe, despite everything. In becoming the spell and the spellcaster at once.

So go ahead - embrace your inner Hypatia, Tituba, or Mother Shipton.

The world doesn’t need more believers. It needs more rememberers.

✶ Call to Action ✶

If this stirred something - a memory, a spark, a curiosity - follow it. Write it down. Pull a card. Light a candle. Ask yourself: Where does wonder still live in me, and what am I afraid to call by its real name?

Then come share your revelations with me over in the app or at Uncharted Tarots on Instagram or Facebook.

Because maybe, just maybe, the compass is pointing us back to the kind of magic that was never meant to be forgotten.

Always,

SyndiCait