I have been done with Christmas for a long while now.
I can't help it.
For too long I was a willing participant and far too long an unwilling participant in a cultural charade that perpetuates the capitalistic enterprise and tells a twisted version of a story whose time is long past.
As my sense of dis-ease with our consumer culture increased in my early to middle parenting years I found myself questioning my own role in Christmas. We decided as a household back then that we would continue decorating, baking, shopping but do so more mindfully.
Many years have passed since that early decision to practice a more mindful Christmas but still the consumer excess grows madly around us. And with no apparent stopping mechanism beyond the tipping points of environmental collapse and an economy in which the rich get richer and the poor get increasingly poorer.
I simply see no place in my life for what Christmas has become. Nor do I believe we are living in a world that can afford for us to continue to celebrate this (and many other time honoured traditions still held sacred) in the manner in which we collectively do so.
I am done with Christmas in all its mindless excess.
Yet please do not be misconstrued.
The heart of Christmas I still hold dear within me.
I adored Christmas as a child and a young woman. It represented the joy and sense of connection I found in the faith tradition I practiced at the time. I welcomed my prayer vigil I held for myself each advent evening as a time of quiet reflection on the first Christmas and its relevance to my own life. I continue to value the depth of a December evening and its call to quiet and honouring what the darkness offers. I realize how contradictory the consumer culture of Christmas and its inherent busyness is to this call I feel on early winter nights.
And yet, taking the time to honour the return of the son/sun as a means of walking from darkness to the light has brought me to an new understanding of the birth story and what it means to me.
Celebrating the birth of a radical whose life demanded we choose terrifically inclusive love
and the beauty of simplicity over amassing possessions is something I am all for. So too with opening our hearts and minds with a childlike sense of wonder to the natural world and all its offerings. But what
might that honouring truly look like? Do you think it would honestly
look anything like the madness that we have turned Christmas into in our
modern lives?
A few years ago when I first noticed the local flyers in mid November announcing their upcoming Black Friday sales I knew that the takeover of our hearts and minds towards full scale American capitalism was underway. Black Friday, Cyber Monday , even Giving Tuesday-- all American terms entering our Canadian lexicon. And to my dismay I saw people all around me seeming to adopt them without question.
It was then that I really felt the scream enlarge within me.
"I want out!"
I am tired of paying homage to a tradition which generates so much waste and wanton greed.
I am tired of seeing the same scenes play out over and over, year after year in the stores and online retailers.
I want an equalizing factor to emerge from our collective hearts and minds. I want to envision a radical new way to more justly secure objects to meet our basic needs for food and clothing and shelter.
I want to crack my heart wide open to the suffering of this beautiful fractured world of fear and wonder. I want release from the ties that bind me to old ways so that the more beautiful world I know is possible can become real.
I want this for my children and their children and all the creatures, soil and waters of this world more than I want a world of Santa Claus and consumer make believe.
All I truly want for Christmas is a real, living and breathing healthy earth. A world that we live in harmony with and whose support systems we choose to recognize and honour. I want to co-create a world freed from reckless inequalities and the desperate suffering of children and animals. I want peace.
When I close my eyes and settle my heart and mind I can already see a new world emerging from the dust of the collapse of our modern lifestyles. I can see it in the willingness of others to begin to craft that world from the precious clay of their own living.
But what am I truly willing to give up in order to help birth a new era? How can I celebrate Christmas with my dear family in a way that honours the truth of what I feel within and what I see before us?
A few starting points to consider regarding celebrating Christmas in this era of climate change:
Love is greater than fear. Christmas can be a time to remember that Jesus was the King of Love. He welcomed the suffering and marginalized and asked that those who were to follow in his footsteps do the same. Practice an act of radical lovingkindness for self and other and for this broken world. And remember to love the earth!
Consider the well being of the environment in all your purchases. Do you need to buy processed food wrapped in single use plastic, or wrapped in plastic at all? Has the food you have in your cart been ethically sourced? Have you considered adding a vegetarian or better yet, *vegan dish to your holiday meal? Rethink whether a gift item is truly of benefit to you or your family or friends? Can you purchase second hand goods as gifts, craft from homemade or support local artisans in their craft? Can you support a local farmers market or CSA for your Christmas celebration?
Who are the disenfranchised, the marginalized in your community? Can you give to a local charity, food bank , environmental group or women's shelter? Can you welcome to your table those in need of food and warmth and friendship?
Give the gift of presence. Practice the act of engaging in presence with those whom you love, with nature, and watch as your world beautifully expands.
Joy can be found in so very many places beyond what the sales flyers and endless ads try to sell us. In caring for the earth, for self and finding room in our hearts for welcoming others we can bring a simplicity back to our lives which is so lacking in this modern age.
Happy Winter Solstice! Happy Mindful Christmas!
Much Peace and Joy to you and may the darkness help you better appreciate the Light.
Love Jill
*We are living in a world which holds the real potential of seeing the extinction of large mammals in the wild in the very near future given current rate of demise as per the WWF Living Planet Index. Going vegan is considered to be quite possibly the sanest response to this massively difficult to compute extrapolation.
https://www.preventyearzero.org/take-action
Sending out a huge tip of my hat and my heart to my favourite vegan, my oldest daughter Maria. Her incredible love of animals and desire to nurture all life inspired her own shift from vegetarianism to veganism. Her dietician declared that she should write a book on how to properly, healthfully be a vegan or teach classes at least. She has chosen to create an instagram account called thisnourishedvegan which she has her brother Lucas do food photography for. Her cooking and baking is wildly delicious and always inspiring. Kudos to you dear Maria for leading our family in the direction of veganism through your quiet and beautiful dedication to your craft.
