Marry Xmas and meaning
I have been asked, “Do you celebrate Christmas?”, more times than I have had Brussel sprouts! It’s a perfectly reasonable question, I have Indian heritage and people wonder what we do at Xmas time.
As it happens my family does celebrate Christmas. In fact, it’s a really special time, one that we all look forward to. The Christmas tradition has been in my family since I was a kid, it began because my mum loved the lights, the decorations, the ambiance, and even the singing. My family likes these aspects of Xmas to this day but the meaning of Xmas has evolved a lot.
We started celebrating Christmas quite superficially, decorating a tree, wrapping and receiving gifts, feeling the elation as we hoped that our wishes were going to be fulfilled. The best part was the ceremony aspect, we did not know exactly what or why it was happening but as we all came around the dinner table, pulling crackers and telling jokes, it felt special and meaningful.
As my sisters and I grew older we learned about the Christian religion at school, learning about Jesus and participating in the nativity plays. Now Christmas was about miracles and magic! Naturally, I made comparisons to Sikhism, the religion that I was born into. I could see that their founders Jesus and Guru Nanak inspired their people to follow similar values like loving your neighbor and brotherhood, even though their stories were quite different or at least how their stories were interpreted by people of those times.
Our parents allowed us to go to church with our friends. We sang carols and joined in extracurricular festivities! Rarely did I feel conflicted about the two religions I was learning about. My parents did not seem worried about it either, they told us that good people and saints are all over the world and have been throughout the ages. My mum would add that we have a natural responsibility to live in an exemplary fashion according to the cultural values of the religion to which we are born. As I understood Guru Nanak more, I saw that he sought to cast out divisional constructs like the caste system in India, and was trying to bring together the Hindu and Muslim communities. Jesus seemed like a like-minded rebel and I saw them as would-be buddies.
In my adult years, I became more interested in the natural world and its’ mysteries. I became interested in Shamanism and then Paganism. They were not religions but modes of connecting with nature in the external world and with our own inner nature. It was now that Christmas yet again took another meaning as I understood that symbols like the Pine tree, Reindeers had come from the pagan traditions, and most surprising that the date for Christmas was adopted by the Romans in their effort to integrate with pagan cultures across Europe. The Romans made their celebrations of Saturnalia around this time. It co-incided with pagan celebrations of the Winter solstice on the 21st. So they merged the two festivals with the Christian movement on the 25th of December.
I shared these stories with my family, nobody really cared. It was a time to get together, cook, eat and spend quality time together and we still treated the time as if it was the birth time of Jesus Christ. It helped me to understand that meaning was more subjective than objective and I was ok with that. However, I now also regularly began to visit the ancient sites of England to connect with its nature: Glastonbury, White horse, Silbury hill, Stonehenge and the ephemeral corn circles that also would appear around these sites. Christmas became even more significant for me, I now saw it as a time that coincided with celestial events! I would also visit Stonehenge at the winter solstice in Avebury and Stonehenge, where thousands of people came together to celebrate. Each year we gathered and hoped that the skies would allow a glimpse of the sunrise, marking the moment that the days would start to get longer again! A most magical moment to behold indeed.
Xmas in my mid-thirties took on new meaning again. Like many, I was becoming disillusioned by the mindless culture that was being propagated by capitalism. Around this time I was regularly visiting Holland with my then Dutch girlfriend. I fell in love with their festivities of Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas was the guy(Saint) behind our Santa Claus, and the figure head of this important celebration across Western Europe. While similar to Christmas, their celebrations had less materialistic expectations. My girlfriends’ family and many others would have a sort of Secret Santa, with each gift we would write a poem written for the receiver by the giver, though it was always signed by Santa (and Piet, Santa’s controversial black helper!). We would spend the evening opening these gifts, reading the poems, trying to guess the giver. The children, of course, knew it was Sinterklaas!
There was more to the Sinterklaas ceremony, from the celebration of food to the singing, but I took the poem and secret santa idea and incorporated it into our Christmas celebration. Now at Christmas, everyone in my family gives just one gift and they write a poem to accompany it. We have been doing this for many years now and we all love to take part. It has helps us to create more thoughtful and meaningful bonds with each other. It also builds the anticipation for Christmas in a more positive way. My nephew and nieces are now not primarily focused on what they are going to get but rather what they are going to create and give to someone else.
A couple of years ago at Christmas, I gifted all my nephew and nieces a £10 voucher to donate to a charity of their choice. As they looked up charities it expanded their minds to all the wonderful things that people are doing all around the world, otherwise, they are in danger of being overwhelmed by all the negative things they see on TV.
This year, now that the children have a got a little older, we are involving them in cooking on the days around Christmas, each of them has been tasked to find a recipe and to cook for everyone else, with optional assistance from an adult of their choosing.
As I reflect back on Christmas, now in my forties, I see that cultures and traditions are successful because they find ways to weave meaning into our lives. The primary method is the act of ceremony.
Ceremonies evolve over time and have a creative element, that keeps them relevant and as a mindful activity. Without the creative aspect, it is perhaps better described as a ritual.
Ceremony strengthens our bonds with the people that we are creating our life. There was a period of time when Christmas felt like it was dragging me along. As I learned more about its history, I felt more enriched, and it unlocked something within me, I realized that Christmas no longer needs to be something I am adopting or following but it can be something that I can make my own.
Today, Christmas is a time for all of the above! I reflect on the values Jesus Christ, I connect with nature, I create meaning with family and friends through eating, singing, and thoughtful gifts.
Christmas is our designated time to take a break from ourselves, and put others first. That is the feeling of goodwill we feel, when others become the center of our attention. That’s what makes it such a special time.
Merry Christmas!
