I have found myself pondering the meaning of Christmas over the last week or so. Now I know that sounds very deep but from an agnostic’s point of view it is quite a key question.
We are a somewhat small and depleted family having lost Dad a few months ago. There is me, my two adult sons and Mum. Of course there is also my brother-in-law and niece but since my sister died five years ago his focus, understandably, has been more to his own family, and I find myself thinking of them as an extension to our family rather than the core family if you understand my meaning.
When my sons were small the whole focus of Christmas was around them. The excitement that built up from shopping trips, visits to Santa’s grotto, school activities until by Christmas Eve they were fit to explode and indeed they did around 4pm on Christmas Day when it all got too much and they burst into tears. As they got older the focus moved to my niece some 11 years their junior and then we had the trauma of Christmas without her mother. We found a way of moving forward going through the motions including trips to the pantomime.
This year, as I have said, there will be 4 of us around the Christmas table. There is no pantomime trip for a range of reasons and it has started to feel that I was going through the motions following a prescribed routine which was fueled by the media and commerce. It felt as though Christmas was really just a glorified roast dinner with some gifts, that none of us really need, thrown in. This is why over the recent weeks the sense that I needed to provide Christmas and some magic, whatever that maybe, has grown and grown. It lead me to wonder what Christmas was actually about. We don’t go to church so once you take out the whole religious meaning of Christmas it seems you are left with the commercial aspect which doesn’t sit well with me at all.
I have said I am an agnostic; despite being christened and confirmed I struggle to embrace organised Christianity. However, I do believe there is something out there – I have no idea what – and over recent years I have felt myself more empathetic to the old religions, the circle of life, mother nature, call it what you will. I find myself more attuned to the changing seasons, lengthening of days, cycles of the moon than I ever will be to the teachings of Christ or any other religious deity. I believe more and more in respecting our surroundings and working with nature.
So as I pondered on how to make Christmas special for my small family, how to bring some magic into the house, how to move away from the commercialisation of it all (prompted by my son on a recent visit to a well-known supermarket saying ‘You can buy Christmas here’). I found myself thinking about why we decorate our homes with greenery, why we have Christmas trees, why we feast and why Christmas is when it is? It doesn’t take much effort to discover that the timing of Christmas coincides, almost, with the winter solstice and the old religion celebrations. When Christianity was being devised (I’m sorry I don’t mean to offend I can’t think of another word) the key celebrations were timed to coincide with existing pagan festivals in order to ‘sell’ the new religion to the masses. In so doing many of the traditions associate with the pagan festivals were subsumed into the new celebrations which is why when you start to think about things like mistletoe and the obsession with holly and ivy and how they relate to Christianity it makes little sense – the same applies to some of the Easter customs. The bringing in of greenery into the house was partly to ward of evil spirits, it was for decorative reasons, and in some cultures evergreen were brought in and decorated to represent gods or goddesses. Mistletoe was considered by the druids to be extremely sacred. It was cut on the sixth night after the winter solstice and distributed to the people to hang over their doors to ward off evils spirits. As for our modern obsession with gift giving this may have developed from the Roman celebration of Saturnalia, an ancient festival which took place in late December.
Where does this leave me and my quest for the spirit of Christmas? Well I have decided, that I wanted to refer to the winter solstice and nature more, and to start some new family traditions. So I have left the artificial tree in the loft and instead we had the fun of going to choose a real Christmas tree, the annoyance of trying to get it to stand up straight and we will no doubt spend a considerable amount of time over the Christmas period hovering up the needles but it feels special. I have kept the decorations simple and traditional – no gaudy tinsel. Finally, I have used the branches cut off the bottom of the tree to make a wreath for the front door to which I have added foliage collected from around the garden which for me is a celebration of mid-winter and marks the turning of the year and days getting longer – as a gardener something I look forward to more than Christmas. Just these simple things have brought Christmas to life in our house far more than in previous years. I think the ‘effort’ of having made/created these things myself rather than buying them ready-made off a shelf means more; my sons have certainly commented on it.
This year it will be a quiet Christmas, with a nice meal, some gifts and spending time together. We will miss Dad and my sister and remember past Christmases and tell stories. It will be a time for reflection but also for looking ahead to the future and I think that is what Christmas is, for me, really all about – being with loved ones and sharing good times and in a way tapping into the American tradition of Thanksgiving, remembering how lucky we are in whatever way.
