The heart of the Holy Nights festival is the spiritual world ‘stepping back’ – as it were – to provide human beings with greater freedom to perceive themselves more clearly. These are the silent nights, the holy nights, when the stars are brightly shining with a particular quality of love, compassion, and receptivity toward that which is in our hearts. The consequence and gift of the spiritual world’s ‘little withdrawal’ during the Holy Nights is that wishes and initiatives arise within us. New Year’s resolutions are a manifestation of the wishes and initiatives that surface in our souls during the Holy Nights.

During the Holy Nights, the spiritual world listens closely to every human being currently incarnated on Earth. Guardian angels of individuals, archangels of family and community, and Folk Souls of nations are just some of the beings who pay close attention to what our soul faculties of thinking, feeling, and willing articulate into the silence of the Holy Nights. Rudolf Steiner explicitly states that the highest hierarchies listen to our souls with particular attentiveness every year during the Holy Nights.

Then, following Epiphany, when the spiritual world steps forward again to interweave our lives as normal during the remainder of the year, these amazing spiritual beings assist us to achieve the wishes and initiatives that we have articulated. The specific types of assistance they will provide is not a complete mystery. Rudolf Steiner and others have learned and taught us how to anticipate when and how the Stars will help us in particular ways throughout the coming year. The presentation closes with examples of how to work with the Stars in this way, plus an extended question & answer session that is truly beautiful spiritual dialogue.

When we speak to the Stars, the Stars speak back. And so it is that engaging in a conversational dialogue with the spiritual world is one of several things at the heart of the Holy Nights festival. As we learn in Lecture 3 of Rudolf Steiner's According to Luke, Buddha helps us with this conversation.