The Journey to Christmas
Part 1. The meaning of Christmas
Introduction
This short essay comes in two parts. Part one is titled ‘The meaning of Christmas”, and part two coming soon, is titled “A journey to Christmas via a Monastery”. In part one, I invite you to think about the meaning of Christmas, because this will colour and shape your experience of the festive season. The meaning we place on Christmas comes from an entanglement of personal, family and cultural influences. Whilst we all hold our own very personal meanings and associations to Christmas, together we create cultural meanings. Expectations, perceptions and how we engage with Christmas emerge from the meanings we construct. We also have choices, do we get seduced and dragged into a manic consumerist Christmas, or can we choose something else?
For secularists, humanists and those from other faith traditions, I invite you to read with an openness, as the reflections aim to transcend religious and spiritual borders. The hope is you will engage and reflect on your own meanings of Christmas, or on your own faith traditions in order to get some clarity and perhaps intervene to make Christmas more the way you would like it. In part two I will share my journey to Christmas via a monastery, which is a response to the meaning that Christmas holds for me.
Part 1. The Meaning of Christmas
It’s mid-December, the children are excited, the shops are buzzing, and Christmas beckons, but what does Christmas mean for you? The Quakers wisely advise members of their community to “Come to meeting for worship with heart and mind prepared.” This is a simple truth that can be applied to all important events, especially those that hold special emotional, symbolic, transcendent and spiritual meanings.
Journeying towards Christmas?
The journey towards Christmas for Christians is called Advent (arrival or coming) and is a preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ, traditionally a four-week period of prayer and repentance followed by anticipation, hope and joy. Different faith and pagan traditions celebrate their own festivals at this time of year, often with a common theme of renewal, and light over darkness. The winter solstice and Christmas season in the northern hemisphere takes us into the dark and cold winter nights, which traditionally would be a time for cocooning ourselves, slowing down and gathering around fireplaces, eating warming and comforting food, and sharing stories.
Yet in secular society, the world is turned upside down and the opposite of slowing down and reflection happens. Work intensity increases in the mad rush to meet end-of-year deadlines, shopping malls spill over with consumerist craziness, and city restaurants and bars are filled with office and Christmas parties, fuelled with excess alcohol and noise. To celebrate and share food together as a work-team can be a time for friendship warmth and communion. Yet many Christmas parties slide into manic, alcoholic-driven events which often lead to unhappy outcomes for some.
Christmas means different things to different people. For me, it means turning away from secular norms and embracing another side of Christmas. The journey to Christmas for me has four stand-out meanings:
What Christmas means to me
1. New Life and Faith: The symbolism of new birth, a time of reflection and spiritual renewal represented by the birth of the Christ child. New life, renewal, the year-end and the beginning of something new….. a space to think about what renewal means to me. Faith is important too- we all have faith in something, and renewing our faith opens us to the possibility of new life.
2. Sharing and Love are at the heart of what Christmas means. Sharing, especially with loved ones, with my family and children brings me deep joy. Sharing food, prayers, experiences and presents are all central to what Christmas means. Kindness and generosity are core to what Christmas means, getting beyond frazzled exchanges to find time for kind words and deeds, with a generosity of spirit that shines through.
3. Tradition: Honouring past traditions and rituals, and at the same time co-creating them anew in the present is an important part of Christmas. Each family and culture has its own way of ‘doing Christmas’. My family’s traditions included buying and decorating a tree, the smell of pine in the house and the Christmas lights that start Christmas for us at home. We also read the Christmas story on the advent calendar, I read my children the same Christmas book my mother read to me, and we put the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve. Rituals and traditions are not static but are dynamic, old traditions are modified to fit new times, and new parts are added.
Food traditions are important to me, and we have new traditions for our Irish/English/Polish cosmopolitan family. We follow Polish tradition on Christmas Eve, eating deep red clear beetroot soup (borsch) with dumplings followed by fish. Before dinner, we break bread and give wishes Polish style. We eat the traditional Christmas English roast on Christmas day (without the meat). Christmas pudding is made prior to the day, and the children stir and make wishes before the 8-hour steaming begins. Midnight mass is my own tradition, (my parents didn’t go) and the opening of presents on Christmas day, then church before lunch. A walk by the sea after dinner….
4. Absences: Christmas is a time that evokes the memories of loved ones who have passed away. I have lost many family members, my parents, siblings and my son Fynn. Christmas brings my grief, especially for my son Fynn, to what can feel like an unbearable weight. Then it recedes and transforms and Christmas comes alive again.
My mother appears to me in the kitchen as I cook the food she once cooked. The smells and the radio playing Christmas carols are very evocative and I smile. These memories and her presence are not usually felt in a sad way, but in more of a grateful way, knowing that I am passing on her recipes, traditions and love to my own children and family.
Taking these four themes, my journey into Christmas is one I need to prepare for, as it’s not an easy journey. I have learned that to have a ‘good’ Christmas and enjoy the first three themes, the sharing and love, the joys of repetition and re-making of traditions, and the capacity to find the space to imagine new life, to celebrate each of our lives, all depends on addressing the fourth theme -absences, and in particular the loss of my son Fynn. I have understood from the early days of his death that if my grief is repressed it will come back to bite me hard.
In part two, the next essay, I will share how I address the loss and absence of Fynn and others by taking a journey to a monastery, to spend time with him and allow my grief to have a space to manifest, and also to be open to the grace and love that comes when we are receptive and open.
Meanwhile, perhaps it is a good question to ask yourself: what are the important themes that are meaningful to you? What does Christmas mean to you?
