Reclaim Christmas
It’s time to reclaim Christmas! Christmas is a magical time when you can reconnect to your family, friends and yourself. With the end of the year, you can delve into a little nostalgia for the year gone by and what you have achieved.
In the West, you often feel as stuffed as the turkey by the time Christmas Day comes around. Christmas starts rearing its head from the end of October often even before you’ve carved out your pumpkin at Halloween.
Adverts start to pop up on television offering everything you could ever want wrapped up in shiny packaging and the aisles at the supermarket are overflowing with Christmas cheer.
Then after a whirlwind of Christmas parties at work, you hit the home straight with encroaching family, endless eating and a fried nervous system.
When I lived in England, I was saturated by Christmas and felt rather Scrooge-like by the time the big day arrived. So much of what we experience is a commercialized vision and nothing to do with Christmas spirit. A lot of Christmas in the west is about money and ego. Christmas with the sacred sucked out.
Christmas In India
I am now living in Goa above a Catholic family and Christmas starts to happen around December 23rd. Nativity scenes start to pop up in peoples’ backyards or in the front of their houses, sweets and blessings are passed out on Christmas Eve but presents do not seem to change hands – this is a time of celebration, a time of community, a bit of dancing and a lot of church. Everyone seems generally thrilled by Christmas, not that it’s a big chore or a fight over who is going to cook Christmas lunch.
Moving From The Past To The Present
Sometimes too, we get hung up on the events of Christmas Past. Maybe we hanker for the simplicity and magic that we experienced at Christmas when we were children. Or maybe Christmas Past reminds us of challenging times or lost loved ones. Whether your memories of Christmas Past are positive like Tiny Tim’s or negative like Scrooge, we need to reconcile ourselves with these memories.
Memories are often so poignant at this time of year, as we can be more sensitive surrounded by family. And often our memory plays tricks on us. Often we have spent so much time thinking back to a particular event that we have changed the reality of it. We can’t change the past, but we can change our perception of it and the impact it has on the present. Christmas Present is a time when we can acknowledge and honour the past, but maybe we can choose to now leave it in the past.
A Spiritual Christmas
So how will I celebrate Christmas this year? I will make time for my loved ones. We make it a time to honour and celebrate what we have here. We take time to visit each other. We still break bread together but we do not try and outdo each other with the size of turkey or gift! I like to take a walk in nature on Christmas Day and give thanks.
Being in Goa, I dive into the sea but taking time out on Christmas Day to acknowledge Nature or your environment is a good way to stay grounded.
Take every conversation and every meeting as a gift. Unwrap each present that you are lucky enough to receive with good grace. Enjoy every moment, taste every morsel of food and drink in the colours of Christmas.
How to Keep Christmas Conscious
• Don’t believe the hype! It’s hard not to get sucked into the commercialism of Christmas, but try to make a few gifts.
• Embrace – enjoy spending time with your family – decorate the tree together. Get everyone making something for the tree or contributing something to the dinner. How about a pot luck Christmas dinner? All make a dish…
• Take time to pray, meditate or celebrate – in your own personal way or with your whole family take time out to honour Christmas and what it really means to you.
• If it’s all getting a little too hot in the kitchen and too many cooks are spoiling the cranberry sauce, do some alternate nostril breathing to bring balance (breathe in through your left nostril, out through your right) or sitali pranayam (make a ‘u’ with the tongue and sip the air in through the tongue and breathe out through the nose) to cool and calm inner anger.
• Walk in nature – whether its wrapping up warm and tramping through the snow or tiptoeing on hot sand, throw yourself into nature and celebrate its gifts.
• Uplift the vibration in your house by playing mantras – or all get together and sing.
• Make a list of 5 fantastic things that happened this past year – give thanks. Remember even the challenging things might have taught you a whole lot about yourself and might be something fantastic wrapped up in odd packaging.
• Talking of packaging, use newspaper and old magazines to wrap gifts rather than environmentally-challenging glitzy paper. Or wrap them in nice fabric.
• Make a conscious Christmas Cake or pudding with all fair-trade fruit and nuts.
• Share stories. So much of our past is kept alive through story-telling, but this seems to be an art lost in the world of flatscreen TVs and the latest blockbuster movie. Tell stories of your family. Make a family tree and try and share the stories that have been passed down.
• Make a Christmas gift to you and the world – a peace vow. Check out the website www.mypeacevow.com for inspiration.