The Holiday Season.... How to Make it Authentic

Do you ever feel like Christmas is no longer meaningful?

Do you question the goodness of continuing the Santa story?

Does Christmas feel like a time of gluttony and greed or outdated rituals and unhealthy habits?

Do you find challenging the desire to celebrate the holiday season while not buying into the nonsense of commercialism?

Recently, I've had several readers asking questions regarding how to make Christmas more authentic and meaningful. After reading my friend Dave's amazing blog, Wandering the Ether, I decided I would share a few of my personal attempts to make this holiday season more authentic, and to blend my personal awareness,* with the common cultural traditions that may not fully capture my heart.

My intent is to present some ideas and examples of ways my family has expanded our celebration of the season, and integrated cultural traditions, stories, and rituals into our personal, perhaps less traditional experience of life.

I encourage everyone to embrace the rituals, stories, myths, and religious traditions that make their lives meaningful and lovely. Whatever brings beauty and goodness into our lives is obviously something to treasure and enjoy and honor. I do not think there is 'a' way to honor the season and am profoundly aware of the lovely spirit that accompanies this time of year in many faith traditions.

This post is created for those who are rethinking some of the traditional ideas and wanting to create something more personally fulfilling and meaningful.

First, if you are wanting to make the season more meaningful, I would suggest answering three questions:

1. What does this time of year mean to you?

2. How can you create experiences to honor this?

3. Are there any cultural traditions that detracts from the beauty of what the season represents to you?

Once these questions have been answers you have a framework upon which to build or create your particular ways of honoring this time of year.

Our rituals and traditions hold the meaning we give to them. Symbols and stories can be embraced, reinterpreted, or reinvented as we put our particular creativity upon them. In addition, we can completely eliminate those activities that are not in harmony with our world view.

Let me give you a few specific examples of what we have done in our family.

Santa Clause.

I struggled with the idea of telling my children a pretend story was real. The Santa story is so much a part of a child's Christmas that is seems Ginchlike to even allow the possibility of not going along with society's pretense.

On the one hand, children are not necessarily emotionally harmed by the story, and it is a magical, delightful fairytale; on the other hand, it felt uncomfortable to promote a myth as reality; in essense, lying and asking them to release reason to believe in the impossible magical, while trusting me to help them know truth.

Our solution is to embrace the Santa story as a joyful Christmas game. Santa is not a real man who has flying reindeer, and gives toys to good children, but a wonderful man dressed up in a costume to remind children how much they are loved by the world. The story becomes a little play in our home, and one child gets to play "Santa" and help put out gifts during the night to surprise the rest of the family. Other children get to play the elves and help wrap or decorate gifts. We have moved the Santa story into the realm where Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid, and other folk stories reside.

Gifts.

I'm guessing most folks in the modern world sense that present giving is out of control. What was once a time for sharing tokens of care and love has become a time of gluttony, greed, and unrealistic and expensive expectations.

While children find Christmas morning one of joy and wonder as they open their beautifully wrapped presents we want the season to represent something more. We want the season to represent the goodness of life, the wonder of our world, and the beauty of each other.

We decided to continue with gift-giving with a few specific guidelines. We would only give gifts that would bless the lives of the recipient and add goodness to the world.

For young children, we attempt to give gifts that stimulate their creativity, strengthen their self esteem, and increase their connection to all of life.

For older children, grown family members, and loved ones, gifts are given to create wonderful memories of togetherness, unite us with the world, and inspire and uplift each other.

Christmas trees.

The Christmas/Yule tree has long been a tradition, going back thousands of years, however the meaning seems to be absent as we focus on having decorations that look like they were designed by the lastest most famous artist.

I enjoy doing any form of interior decorating but we decided to again, find a way to bring meaning back into the symbolism. In our home we love to bring the outdoors inside and enjoy the idea of greenery as part of our winter decorating, so we have two trees..... filled with memories.

One tree is a collection of mementos and decorations collected as we visit various friends and places, and participate in meaningful activities. The tree reflects the love and insight we have experienced from people and events that have blessed our lives.

Our second tree is a filled with our children's art work tenderly saved over the years. The tree has several hundred little decorations made from all the treasures and projects our children have made as they journey through life. Each year as we come together and fill the tree with the beautiful reminders of their development and wonder, we are reminded again of the gift of life, the blossoming of each little soul, and the joy that fills our lives as each child shares his or her gifts with the world.

Again, however one chooses to honor and celebrate the season is not as important as finding meaning and beauty that adds goodness to your life.

If honoring the birth of baby Jesus fills your life with peace and joy then it is blessing your life. Similarly, if creating rituals or traditions to remember the human spirit and our connection to life is meaningful this too is lovely. Or if remembering the gifts of ancestors and carrying on their ancient traditions deepens one's experience of life it will bring a depth of beauty to the experience of living.

The point of this post is about celebrating the season in a way the brings peace and joy to you and your loved ones.

It is about creating rituals and traditions that feel honest and authentic, embracing stories and ideals that bless your life and support your particular worldview.

It is about taking the ancient human traditions and expanding them to better fit the current human journey, or possibly reminding us of these early human stories and why they were originally created.

However you celebrate this time of year, may your traditions, rituals, and stories fill your world with goodness and graciousness!

With love and peace to all,

Jennifer