What Do You Do About Christmas?
Christmas is the 600-pound gorilla of holidays; it's really hard to ignore. I do, however, seem to ignore it more than most people. This morning a woman told me she was all ready for Christmas. "I start in April," she said. I've only today reached the "bleep, it's almost Christmas" phase.
I am a Christmas minimalist. I give a few presents. If prevailed upon, I will bake a pie. That's about it. My kids are adults now; I think they've got the Santa Claus thing figured out.
One part of Christmas I enjoy is the traditional music. Long ago I sang in a chorus that performed at least 15 complete Handel's Messiah's every December, with a real orchestra and professional soloists. Great fun. This year, I checked to see if there were any local public "Messiah" sings, but they were all at the same time as my sangha's Rohatsu retreat. No hallelujahs this year.
So, how do you manage Christmas? How about an electric bodhisattva for the top of the tree?
Credit: Bodhidharma (without Santa hat) by floating ink / flickr.com; Creative Commons License
Comments
I celebrate it the same as before I discovered Buddhism – with family and friends, enjoying their company, giving and receiving gifts with those I love. I never really got into the whole Christian side of it. I tend to celebrate the spirit of it all, not the religious side of it. BUT — i would love to see a Bhodidharma Santa ornament!
I feel the same as Frank (spend time with family and friends). My whole family is Catholic and so I’d be the only one not celebrating if I didn’t show up for it, but I don’t really do anything besides showing up. I do only a couple gifts among immediate family, but no tree or decorations (was never into that anyways).
You can also pretend you’re celebrating Bodhi Day (Dec.
a couple weeks late. It involves a tree too.
For a few years after my son went off to college I didn’t even bother putting up a Christmas tree. I sent out some cards and gifts to my family.
Now that there’s a wonderful new person in my life who isn’t a Christian either, we enjoy the season by putting up our little $5 garage-sale Christmas tree decorated with ornaments my partner has left over from her childhood. We still send out cards to our family and closest friends but luckily we’re too poor to buy gifts
which takes all the stress out of the holidays.
Mostly we enjoy this time of year by staying snug in our little apartment, watching some Christmas movies, drinking lots of hot chocolate and being grateful that we have each other.
Most of the time here in Alaska it feels like Christmas by Halloween – but then it feels that way at Wal-Mart by halloween, too. We have a lot – a lot – of non-christians up here, and they always feel a little hi-jacked, which is why I think that most places have gone to saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. All of my relatives are in Texas, and we don’t usually go till Feb or March, when I need a good good dose of sunshine to drive the depression away. But in our little town, the museaum has a gingerbread house contest, and the next town over has a nativity scene set up (haven’t been yet), and I read a lot of books.
I call my family and grandkids a lot, and mail them Christmas stories to read before the Christmas Day (12 days of Christmas is what I call the books) –
but I will never forget a friend who said, Everyday is a gift, which is why it is called the present.
I would rather give experiences – time together, or babysitting for a family that can’t afford babysitters so they can go catch a movie on Christmas Eve or Christmas day, or go out taking pictures of all the snow on the mountains and the trees.
Last Christmas I didn’t want to get out of bed, because we couldn’t go home, and one of our grandsons had drowned earlier that summer. This Christmas I’m just happy my family made it through that bleak, bleak time, so I am just glad it is the present – all December long. Yoby
[Dissertation deleted; way off topic -- Barbara]
Appreciated that short dissertation. I need to look up some of the terms, but I got the gist of the thing. Some people do need to reason it out, to have it “rational”, but some like me have to take what Kierkegaard (sp?) would call “the leap”. I can understand and study God, or tak ethe leap and have a relationship. Even though that isn’t Bhuddist, I learn a lot about patience , kindness and tolerance from Bhuddists, Christians often seem so determined to turn people into projects and to work to hard at “loving their enemies’ instead of “being love”.
My brain pan is too small to take in the arguments of people who need more rational explanations, I admire those who can pull it off. But that is the nice thing about God, the universe, the tao, and everything. It is vast enough for the most complex investigation, and simple enough for a child.
I do not decorate, I enjoy THE day by myself,
no hassle, rushing around, a peaceful day, eat when hungry-seafood mostly. I do give a few gifts, I am asked out to places, but it is my day,so I refuse. I prefer to relax. I started this 6 years ago, and love every minute of it,
I focus on what is inspiring:the celebration of life, kinship and love. Some gift giving,visiting, having family and friends over for a special holiday meal and gathering. I leave behind the frantic shopping,the gotta haves, the bad food and alcohol,the over top decorating and attending my Roman Catholic upbringing church services.
I do it all, the tree, the stockings, the lights. It’s a festival of lights no matter what any religion says. Trungpa Rinpoche had his students start a “Childrens Day” tradition at about the same time — on the day of the Solstice — and we have a “children’s shrine” next to the Xmas tree, and they go very beautifully together. Here’s a link to more about Childrens Day and the Childrens shrine: http://www.shambhala.org/arts/fest/wintersol.html
I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness(grandmother dragged me in) with a Catholic mother and a Methodist father. They don’t fully understand my spiritual journey but they are begining to ask. I married a Methodist man that is now an atheist. We have three kids that are being raised in a very Christian town with family close by(3 miles). We have decided to celebrate Christmas but not as a Christian holiday. We celebrate the harvest and no farmers from our town have been injured by the harvest. They are still bringing in the corn.
We celebrate the togetherness of the hoildays. Everybody is trying to use their leave time before the end of the year. We are probably getting together on New Years Eve actually this year.
We are doing a small gift exchange for the kids. We are focusing on being kind to the Earth and making “green” gifts with found items. They are hitting the recycling bin pretty hard. We are trying to teach them a message of onlyusing what is essential and taking no more.
We are focusing on balance too. If they recieve a gift, they should give a gift. We are doing this by ellimanting toys and donating them to Goodwill. They have asked their grandparents to save wrapping paper to recycle or use for scrapbooking too.
In Body + Soul I saw the cutest idea for wrapping paper, rinsing and drying old potato chip bags and turning them inside out for giftwrap paper. (I love that magazine.)
I think myidea of gifting is so different now. Even my kids have so much stuff in their own homes they really don’t need another thing from me. Even my friends aren’t really into gifts, it always feels like giving up or giving down, but never really across friends. Heart to heart instead of the hierarchal pyramid.
I think the advent of the year,m the deepening and increasing darkness till winter solstice is creeping into my bones, but there is, every year, some turn-around right after solstice. Because I want to wrap a present in a refurbished recycled potqato chip bag, but who would I give it too and what? I must have thrown out ideas but sadly today can’t seem to recall.
Anyone else have some ideas to put a potato chip bag around?
Christmas did not exist in our country before 1990, when it was restored, and for me New Year’s eve has always been the real thing. We have always had a New Year’s tree and the so-called Father Frost (looking just like Santa Claus) who would come by at midnight (when the colck strikes 12 and the New Year is born) accompanied by Snow-white and they would give presents away. So, it has always been a secular holiday for me. After the restoration of X-mas, however, the Westent commercial image of the holiday drowned the Christian idea to some extent. Anyway, old people here still accept it as the Birth of Christ and they do and make traditional things (food and customs)that they know from old times, and not the Western stuff.
Very few people here are religious, in fact, which is also heritage from communist times, thus we don’t really focus on that aspect.
So, I manage pretty well, but children … I don’t know how we are to explain things to our daughter. Being isolated from your peers may be really harmful, you know.
I am the only Buddhist in the family. I have 3 grown children but they are all in late teens to early twenties. So I ask for a very few gifts; I give gifts of service (to charities) in my friends and families names along with gifts to the family. I try to instill the idea that generousity to those truely in need are more in line with the Christmas (ala Saint Christopher) is more important than truckloads of gifts to family.
After I took refuge, my Christmas tree became an enlightenment tree.
Mailed off my packages, and realized I didn’t purchase anything new for anyone, just pulled out books and objects I knew they would love, and sent those. I have such an abundance after 28 years of marriage, that I shop at home. And forget the wrapping with recycled potato chip bags. I just shipped them off in the Usps boxes priority mail, and knew they would be thrilled just to get something in the mail.
Not doing a Christmas tree because I have 3 90lb. dogs all aunder a year oild. After wathching the clips to Marley and me, decided that maybe they are my Christmas, taking away the bleak and dark of Alaska (even if Trungpa Rimpoche said the “Depression, it’s the best, It’s so juicy.)
Using the low moodiness to do Tonglen meditation for the holiday.
And ringing my tonglen bells for eveyrone here. Yoby