The Christmas season is ending, and we have a new year 2012. Celebrations have been taking place, many people went to their Christian church, we saw great fireworks – Sydney gave a fantastic display!
Christmas is about companionship, love, sharing and it is a Christian ceremony focusing on the birth of Christ – giving it great importance for Christians all over the world.
New years eve and day is about cheering the old and new years – preparing for the new activity that is coming.
Christmas is also about gifts that we give to each other, and it is about having a quiet time. Especially for children Christmas has always been a great time – expectations of gifts giving rise to great expectations and even causing grave nervousness for some.
But there is a change coming as we increasingly lose touch with the real meaning of this ancient ritual. The market and business have taken Christmas and made it a pretence for shopping, for consumption. They are pressuring us hard to make it a good Christmas. The ritual has turned into a mockup, a setting for buying things, a perfect mishmash of everything.
The Christmas ceremony seems to have been instituted by the Romans, some say it was constructed or chosen by the Romans, it was made as a forceful combination of the birth of Jesus and the birth of the new year. Green decorations has been used for a long time, say 500 years. And now the mass production economy has taken over – the occasion is focused on buying. Even Asia is catching on, although the colour of Christmas is often blue there – blue trees, light, and even a bit of Disney and Grimm thrown in.
Asia already have many ceremonies tied in to the seasons of the year, so Christmas is not really needed.
The central part of Christmas is now the gift – as it once was. But there has been a profound change. Community is difficult in a society where there is lots of money. You just pay people to do what you want – you do not really need the people themselves. Community is based on relationships, dependencies, gifts, exchange of services – all interwoven. Poor people often have strong communities.
Many writers have said that a gift should represent yourself – tell the recipient who you are, what you do, what you think. It could be from your occupation, handicraft, gardening, a written piece perhaps.
These days most people make nothing, they have nothing representaive to give. Mass production and increased material wellbeing has solved this – we buy and give in abundance. But gifts are now often what you need anyway, so the symbolic effect, the picture of the giver, her personality is now totally absent. There is not enough depth in this kind of giving. Often money is given because people need that.
Christmas cards also play a part. We have moved far from each other, from country to city which has made gifts very unpractical, we send a greeting instead – a fine card. Many people are putting a lot of effort into these greetings, they become both rich and personal and are a turn back to the roots of Christmas.
Father Christmas is another invention of uncertain origin, and he is also a confidence man as he does not sell, he merely makes you buy, a role that is not so easy. His logistics of reindeers is also rather impractical, but builds the myth well.
The food that once was so essential is still there, but the situation and the circumstances have changed – maybe we should not eat so much? And cut the drinking?
Gifts are symbols of love, we send gifts in the hope of receiving love, and this works both ways. In the old days a bearer of gifts was expected to have a reward, a gift had spiritual content, it meant something, it was a message also.
It may be that what is now happening in the course of a Christmas and new years celebration is empty of real meaning, it does not satisfy us mentally any longer. In many countries the support for the Church is waning. We are left with a celebration that is a mix of basically unconnected elements and we see commercial pressure piling up.
We are left wanting – the emperor wore no clothes – we know how much it all costs, we can add it up, and it is now done as part of a commercially wild behaviour. Empty myths that are commercialism in disguise are not sustainable.
Seasonal celebrations and religious celebrations are a strong combination, but now we have been left confused, because it has become a shopping gala – the taste of it all is not so good.
So where do we go now: Start thinking, man, think and then make changes – amazingly we need to go back to our roots of personalized gifts, common ceremoy, joy and reflection, even without religion. And buy less – even nothing – give your self first, then build community – then we have the foundation for a good celebration.
Common rituals for all is what we want – ceremonies that offers meaning, depth and that we can find reason to take part in.
duds@basics.hammarskjold” rel=”nofollow”>.…
thanks!!…