The Joy and Sorrow of Christmas.

For openers, in spite of what you might have thought given the title, this thread isn't about the Religious ritual that is Christmas, or how the Church of Rome stole the Pagen Winter Solstice Celebration, while replacing it, with the baby Jesus (God bless his little heart).

Nope, if possible, what I'd like to talk about here is - what Christmas does to us all, one way or another, whether on the one hand, making us run around for presents in some sort of frenzied anticipation of something both hoped for and dreaded both at the same time, or, if you are like me, say with parents passed on and siblings far away and to a degree estranged, reminiscing, over the childhood memories and the felt pangs of moments sublime now fading with the years yet still capable of filling the heart to the full with BOTH sorrow AND joy together.

Christmas then, I'm pretty sure, represents an extraordinary opportunity, for therapy, on a massive scale, since it points us all to those qualities of family, which both hearten us dearly and/or serve as cups of sorrow, where perhaps the more that sorrow has carved into our being, the more joy we can contain (Gibran)..

Perhaps we may console one another in our misery here : ) while at the same time celebrating the very BEST of what Christmas has to offer, what it is and represents within the context of family, and we all have one!

And for those of you, for whom Christmas is something you simply cannot deal with, and must dismiss out of hand for whatever reason, as if it's just not happening, I can assure you that this thread has no ill will or intent designed to unneccessarily stir up unwanted feelings in anyone, don't shoot the messenger here!

But in a way, at the same time, that propensity for Christmas to do that very thing, to raise in us BOTH our deepest sorrows AND our joyfilled family moments spent with those we love, and, perhaps with those we love to hate in some cases, because we love them too in spite of themselves and in spite of our selves - oh the sorrows and the joys of Christmas..!!!

I figured it would be interesting to hear what people have to say about this, from their own perspective, without blaming anyone or anything in particular, you know, speaking from the heart about what Christmas raises for YOU.

Best Regards,

Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Hi New,

You hit the nail on the head.

I think the huge Xmas hype puts too much pressure on everyone.

There is this huge belief that you should just love it, but for a lot of people it is lonely and sad, or fighting families, or families who have to meet when they don't even like each other.

It is a huge strain, and since all religion etc has left it and it is just a huge commercial thing - let's forget it.

Just another day - but it would be nice if the name Christ was taken out of it, since it no longer is anything to do with Christ.

reply to post by catwhoknows

Only to the degree perhaps, that the human being is like carbon, and Christmas the extra pressure trying to turn us all into multifacted diamonds..maybe!

no worries I won't hijack this thread, as some sort of Christmas therapeutic overlord or something (Rudolf can be powerful, but virtue is power restrained).

We'll all here to console one another as we are to raise everyone up, but this Christmas thing, you right, it's like a monster with a life all its own!

Talk about pressure!

[from jesus perspective, it's from baby-in-a-manger straight to dripping sweat like blood in the Garden of Gesthemene! - you know I'd have to slip Jesus into this discussion somewhere..]

Anyway, much love from here, where I'm just filling up to the brim over Christmas. I do it every year, same thing, an overflowing of sorrow and joy.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Well,

You know me and Jesus, New. I am totally affronted that His name is there in the most commercial and anti-people day of the year.

Xmas (I prefer to call it that) makes people suffer.

It makes kids greedy.

It makes people overspend - it makes people get on credit. And it makes people suffer for the rest of the year.

It causes untold trouble.

Is there anyone out there who actually welcomes Xmas day?

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Christmas is a religious holiday for Christians. It is the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus. No one makes anyone run around and buy presents in the name of Jesus' birth. These materialistic rituals around the Christian holiday is a marketing ploy of business plus an effort by anti-Chrisitans to deny the meaning of the holiday. These materialistic rituals have nothing to do with Christians or Jesus or the religious holiday. They ban any mention of the reason for the holiday in public displays and activities - so they have no meaning at all. In my family, we always celebrate the birth of Jesus and his gift of forgiveness and it's transformation of us on Christmas.

Presents and alms are bought and given in that spirit to other Christians. I don't include non-Christians in my religious holiday experience and the secular stuff is not really Christmas to me - it is just giving people in this society a reason to have a party that means nothing to them beyond material and pleasure. Non-Christians can call the holiday, stripped of his holiness, Christmas if they want to, but it is not.

So run around and resentfully buy up all the junk you want for the winter solstice holiday you celebrate. Don't call what you are doing the religious holiday of Christmas.

reply to post by catwhoknows


The child in me still does, but I'm a hopeless romantic or something.. can't help it.

The children do, and families everywhere, or I should say, in many places they do, and the idea of the loss and the return of the light of the sun, involving cosmic energies, all of it together produces not something I would ever label as entirely bad, it's just got a LOT of stuff going on, at a variety of levels, but here I was pointing I suppose to Christmas in the context of family and of family memories from chldhood, and for the Children.

It can't be all bad, to help get through the darkest part of the year, while the sun goes through it's own process of returning for a new year.

It's just RIPE with energies, of all different kinds, and it's only appropriate that we are generally sent back into the home of our clan or family of origin in many cases, to huddle there by the fire, loving one another and showing mutual appreciation for our own family, whatever that might mean.

At least that's what I was thinking of in making this thread - just asking what it evokes for people.

I would imagine many people still welcome it, the experience of it, and the children do, or at least we USED to anyway..!

I am all for my holidays. I am happy in my gnosis and paganism. I really hate the hype and yes some people go completely overboard. When I was a kid I worked in Safeways and saw people having Xmas meltdowns. I know I am wasting bandwith but people should try to do a bit less and enjoy the holiday. Cut up the credit cards!!!

reply to post by NewAgeMan


New,

I need to say something completely different here - Assange threads have been removed.

I know, because I posted a reply supporting a truth-teller and damning governments.

And it has all been removed.

A good christmas to me is being warm and knowing everyone is home relaxing and enjoying their company.

I hardly ever want anything for christmas but this year, I know what I want.

I doubt I'll get it.

reply to post by sara123123


You'll have to bear with me as I believe in what I like to call the all-inclusive, non-local quantum holographic cosmological Christ (same diff), which is an all inclusive spirit of love and forgiveness that is ever present regardless of what anyone believes, so from that perspective, the inner meaning or the esoteric meaning of Christmas is also freely available, as a spirit moving, as in "Joy to the World" where "fields and floods, rocks hills and plains, repeat the sounding joy, repeating the sounding joy", a triumph in time and history and even in creation, I get that, and believe in it too, that it's an all inclusive extension of a gift, carried in it's true meaning and significance, as a Christian Religious Celebration. All I'm saying is Christians don't have a monopoly on the spirit of Christmas, which, like the love of Christ, is very much a family affair.

that's it for me,

Rudolf /signing out.

Originally posted by catwhoknows
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

New,

I need to say something completely different here - Assange threads have been removed.

I know, because I posted a reply supporting a truth-teller and damning governments.

And it has all been removed.

Well, I am like the "Julian Assange" of dark family secrets (if you read my introduction a little while back) I suppose this is why you bring this to me?

All that shows is a conspiracy.

We were talking about Christmas here, or is there a parallel...

I like holidays. I like what they should be at least. I work in retail. I work on christmas and christmas eve. I hate christmas music. I like the spirit the holiday itself stands for.

I enjoy getting presents, sure, but there is no better feeling for me than to look up at the sky on christmas night and smell that cold fresh air and look at the clear moon and to know that you're carrying on a tradition that is, in some ways, older than you can comprehend.
I like christmas because I love seeing my lady's face (she's a christmas fanatic). She puts me in the spirit.
I love the warmth of a christmas tree with lights and the potpourri of evergreen. I love the stories those trees tell. Stories about kids growing and life moving in short and eternal circles.

I hate being around other people on christmas because they're always in a hurry and they're always rude. This comes from a few years in retail. It kind of seals the deal when you get told your life is worthless because your store ran out of turkey.
Merry Christmas eh?

I may be romantic, but I think everybody needs something to be romantic about sometimes. Everybody needs to know that there's still hope and there's still some kind of reason and flow to the world. That's what christmas is to me. It's a tether connecting us through innumerable years back to fire and fear of the dark. It's beautiful for what it is.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


New,

I am so sorry to do that, but I felt an affinity with you - and I cannot access my political thing now - it is blocked.

Well, Jesus told the truth and everyone hated Him.

Assange is telling the truth and everyone hates him.

I am not saying Assange is Jesus. I am saying he is a truth-teller. People hate both.

reply to post by catwhoknows

A star for you!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Maybe Assange will return like the sun, and proclaim himself the 2nd coming! I'm just kidding, he's been helpful to put the fear of God into the controllers, and that's a good thing. Exposing dark family secrets is always the right thing to do in the final analsysis, so that history needn't repeat itself.

Cheers to all truth tellers, wherever they are this Christmas, including Assange (talk about arrogant though), and if people hate them then that only means they are doing the good work.

Definitely bowing out now, would love to see more of those Christmas spirit posts, of which i only see just one so far in the whole thread.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Have a great New Year.

And thanks.

Screw it. It's Christmas, so I can make another post if I want!

What I am asking for this Christmas, is courage, the courage to follow my dreams and to take good care of me, not just for me but for people I haven't even met yet. The courage to make some moves and changes, maybe prepare to find a mate and have a loving family of my own. The courage to quit smoking. Courage to work hard, go to sleep at a reasonable hour and have the discipline to get up in the morning. The courage to more fully accept myself as I am and not have to apologize for being couragious, or even more fully self expressed. The courage to love and to recieve love, and the courage to grow, and become a better person in greater alignment with my own faith, gnosis or understanding. The courage to let go and let God, where God can help me, by giving me the courage where I am lacking. Courage, is what I am asking for, for Christmas this year, because I just can't keep going on living the sub-standard life that I've relegated myself to. I deserve better for myself, but I know that it's courage more than anything, that a person needs to move forth in fear and trembling into uncharted territory, where real and lasting joy and happiness may be found, and never lost again. That's what I want, and we tend to get what we pray for I'm beginning to discover. It always manifests in one way or another, somewhere down the line, everything and anything. Perhaps that's the magic of Christmas, is the faith or hope in better things as yet unseen..

Hmmmm personally I see it like this, we have gone from I'd like, to I want, to I have to have...

The I have to have's seem to rule the Christmas spirit now a days, alongside the need for us to consume all the rubbish they put on the market.

Fortunately for me, we still have a number of community events that surround Christmas, regardless that they may be steeped in pagan heritage (e.g wassailing) they make Christmas a little more fun

Edit to add:
Although I do love spending Christmas with my family, I also love sharing the Christmas spirit with my friends, neighbours, and people I do not know!

reply to post by NewAgeMan


NEW!

You have that courage - I know it.

Go forth, my friend.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
Screw it. It's Christmas, so I can make another post if I want!

What I am asking for this Christmas, is courage, the courage to follow my dreams and to take good care of me, not just for me but for people I haven't even met yet. The courage to make some moves and changes, maybe prepare to find a mate and have a loving family of my own. The courage to quit smoking. Courage to work hard, go to sleep at a reasonable hour and have the discipline to get up in the morning. The courage to more fully accept myself as I am and not have to apologize for being couragious, or even more fully self expressed. The courage to love and to recieve love, and the courage to grow, and become a better person in greater alignment with my own faith, gnosis or understanding. The courage to let go and let God, where God can help me, by giving me the courage where I am lacking. Courage, is what I am asking for, for Christmas this year, because I just can't keep going on living the sub-standard life that I've relegated myself to. I deserve better for myself, but I know that it's courage more than anything, that a person needs to move forth in fear and trembling into uncharted territory, where real and lasting joy and happiness may be found, and never lost again. That's what I want, and we tend to get what we pray for I'm beginning to discover. It always manifests in one way or another, somewhere down the line, everything and anything. Perhaps that's the magic of Christmas, is the faith or hope in better things as yet unseen..

I will try to put this into new age terms for you. When we are trying to move out of one place and into a better place, often we have to overcome unsuccessful habits and actions we have done in the past. We hold ourselves back with the past. Jesus Christ has offered a real power of cleaning the slate for you if you do this: Examine what you have done that is wrong at it's most true and basic point, it's effect on you and others and confess it to Jesus. Be sorry for what you have done wrong in the past and resolve to do better and ask Him to take it all away from you. Tell Him about hurt that others have caused you and forgive it and ask Him to take it away from you.

I have never done this process w/o emotion - it churns up the disappointments and judgements..I can also feel it when the darkness is taken away. That is why He was born. To release you from "sin" - to release you from the past so that you can be new and trust yourself again or be trustworthy - or another way of saying that is to have courage.

reply to post by sara123123

Thank you and btw, my monicur is misleading, as I am a Christian believer who believes in the radical transformative power of the love and grace of God through the person of Jesus, and that our work is much more far reaching than our own personal forgiveness, and I have that, having Christ. The only reason really that I could even dare to call myself a "new age man" as in a man of the new age of grace and spirit, and of reason. is because of Him, the real elder brother on the cross, taking it all upon himself, for the sake of love, an all-inclusive proposition, not just for me, but through me as well (as he sends us..) and NOT just for the sake of winning converts, but for the sake of the same love that God has for me through the son, and well, which then starts to become my own love, and then of course they will know me by my love, that I am a Christian, there will be no denying it.

I don't NEED to be out here wearing my heart on my sleeve because I need teaching in more appopriate terms, but thank you for the kind sentiments.

I'm well past the forgiveness stage, I AM justified, there's no question, and my own sins are no worse than anyone else's. So now I wish to be sanctified and to therefore sanctify myself to a cause worthy of me, starting with me, and then moving out from there, that's all, that's what I was up to, while allowing my own weakness to become my strength, because that's where God DOES help us.

I am glad that you didn't scorn me there, because that would have said more about you, than about me!

It's all good.

But I wanted this to be an all-inclusive thread, not a Christianity vs. Christmas thread or whatever.

Ironic that I am the one asking for courage here, eh?

And for those out there who don't believe or call themselves Christian, let me just say that I didn't want for this thread to become contentious at all or to provoke any division, only to invite some nice good 'ol kind hearted sharing about Christmas, that's all, or is that kind of thing no longer...allowed? Are we THAT far gone..?