It’s hard to believe that there are only 12 days until it’s Christmas! For me, the middle of December has always been a magical time – everything looks, sounds, smells and feels different. There is this unspoken expectation hanging in the air that magic is about to happen – a creative tension of childlike wonder and joy – familiar and simply impossible to ignore.
Looking back now from January until December, I see an exquisite and intricate brightly colored quilt sewn and embroidered by the hands of those I have shared 2009 with. Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring have cycled through these months connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting a diverse catalogue of faces, hearts and souls. Standing from this seasonal vantage point, I feel outrageously wealthy with appreciation for the colors and textures that each of you has added to my year.
This is the season where we review all the moving parts of our lives and make a list, check it twice and appreciate, value and buy gifts for those in our lives who have added to the wealth of the year. This is the season for retailers and businesses all over the country to encourage us in this gift buying frenzy by hanging mistletoe, tinsel, hiring Santa’s and piping carol music throughout the centre in symbols, language, images and music that celebrate a northern hemisphere Winter Solstice, Yule, Saturnalia and various “stories” with origins in other times, cultures, mythologies and belief structures.
Here in the southern hemisphere, it is summer - the night is short, day is long and the temperature is humid and hot. Yet we annually put men into hot red and white fluffy Santa suits with boots, capes, furred collars, long jackets and pants. We stuff them into these suits and pay them to sit in air conditioned North Pole decorated shopping centres, while outside under the harsh Australian sun, the mercury boils over 40 degrees Celsius and the only ice we need cools the beer that we swill as we sit watching the cricket in our boardies and thongs.
Year after year we decorate our green plastic trees, drape our houses with thousands of twinkling fairy lights, sing songs about snow and covet traditional Christmas turkey, plum pudding and egg nog all from the comfort of our air conditioned homes while outside, our gardens are burning and melting under another scorching southern summer.
So what are we actually celebrating here?
Life is a series of natural processes that appear to be following a continuous cycle. The passing of time and the progression of birth, life, decline and death, as experienced in human lives, is echoed in the progression of the seasons through the solstices and equinoxes. Winter solstice is the midpoint between Samhain and Imbolc – the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring and many Christmas symbols appear to celebrate this process.
I know - let’s set up a global public debate between the finest academic scientific brains and get to the bottom of this story! :-) Like those in the centuries before us, we will simply add our own perspective to the meaning of this human celebration – this expression – this holi- day. Perhaps our willingness to continue to celebrate such a paradox of stories perfectly illustrates how the human heart wishes to express magic, joy and love in unrelenting and infinite creation, connection and celebration?
So from me - Merry Christmas. Happy Holi-days. Kool Yule, Season’s Greetings – whatever you wish to call it!
In December 2009, in an age where 50 is the new 30, grey is the new black, old is the new young and the mythology of race, religion, culture and sex merge and blur from the many into the one, I wish you an appreciation of the colours and textures in all the stories you have collected and created in your lives, wrapped in boxes and placed under your tree. Enjoy – in joy – as you carefully unwrap these gifts on Christmas morning ripping through the paper and the ribbon as you celebrate what’s inside the box.
xxx
