Prompt: #30 from “Christmas Therapies” book
My understanding of Christmas continues to evolve as does my understanding and living into myself evolve. As a child Christmas meant presents and having to negotiate being around more folks than usual. My little introverted, Scorpio self would love to go hide in a closet or a cabinet to be alone with my thoughts. This became such an issue for my mother that she bought shoestrings with bells built into them so she could find me. I was not hiding from her inasmuch as I was hiding from the many energies and presences in the world. But, I digress. Christmas also meant peppermint candy canes and extra chocolate candies around the house instead of those insipid red striped, peppermint hard candies or those disappointing orange butterscotch candies. I swear that folks never heard my cries for toffee candies or those cola-flavored candies. But, again, I digress. Through the eyes of a child, Christmas was definitely an exercise in narcissism run amok.
My adolescent into teen years saw Christmas become an opportunity to give in addition to receive. It was cool to give gifts and observe how recipients reacted to your gifts. In addition, it was exciting to see how people responded to gifts given by others. These observations helped to inform my understanding need versus want. I had ecstatic and fleeting love with those gifts that I wanted; whereas, my love for those gifts I needed was indifferent initially, but grew to become a enduring and abiding love. Elders can be so annoying with that being right and know what is best for you thing, but, again, I digress.
As an adult,
In the midst of a global pandemic, Christmas represents “divine connection, divine love, and an embracing of the world” cited in the therapy 30 from the book Christmas Therapies. This year Christmas strikes me as a global and spiritual experience that will bless all of us with a sense of meaning and purpose that could inspire and feed us throughout the year the come.
Sadly, this will not be warm as fuzzy for each of us. While we are all in the same boat with this pandemic, how each of experiences this pandemic is colored by the complex intersections of ethnicity, gender identity and expression, culture, class, economic privilege, and sexuality. For the unhoused person or family, Christmas seems more likely to be a perpetuation of living .
