I think I may have mentioned on Ye Olde Blogge a time or hundred that every year I struggle with our North American commercialization/celebration of Christmas. It has become much too materialistic and in-your-face for yours truly.
This season has become instead a time of reflection and review and planning for me as the nights get longer and longer. And I love this time of year for that!
TRIGGER WARNING: If someone holding a different opinion than your own could lead to you turning into a Judgey McJudgepants and leaving a nasty comment, please skip over this next section. If you feel you must take a tone with me, your comment may or may not be deleted, depending on how much of a chuckle I get out of it.
Oh sure, I partake in some Christian Christmas rites. It’s part of my upbringing and my history. I put up a tree. I send out cards to friends and family. I re-watch old Christmas movies and sing along to carols. I even do the gift thing, although more and more I am giving gifts that are homemade – gifts of my time and intention. I love to wish people a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year AND I mean it. I do these things because I enjoy them and I like celebrating this season (this month, especially) of long nights and waiting for the sun to return.
I am not a Christian, so there is no religious meaning to my celebration. You won’t find a manger scene at my house. But I will haul out the Seashell Jesus, because I find it amusing. I think I’ll put it next to the picture of Krampus my talented son made for me. For balance. Someday maybe I’ll add a representation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to the mix, and my triptych of mythical beings will be complete. Ramen!
If you are reading this and a practicing Christian/Jew/Wiccan/Pagan/Hindu/Zoroastrian/Muslim/WhateverReligion, great! You do you. Whatever gives you comfort and meaning is cool with me. Please return the favour.
TRIGGER WARNING OVER.
What I am celebrating at Chez Badass is this: the end of the darkness and the return of the light. Because the longest night – tonight – the winter solstice (the official start of Yule or Yuletide) – is something I can get behind.
I do so love this rock we live on – the natural world – and the turning of the year, and I like to acknowledge this event. And this is the time and the season for me to pause and reflect and set intentions for the next spin around the sun that I am lucky enough to be a part of.
This is nothing new. Humans have been celebrating the solstice since well, we first noticed it was “a thing”. And these Yule celebrations have been co-opted into Christianity and have become integral to the Western celebration called Christmas.
For my particular celebration of the longest night, I will lighting (many, many) candles and finalizing my goals and intentions for the coming year. These include, in no particular order of importance (because they are all important to me):
- more artistic activity
- more mindfulness
- more writing – specifically, more blogging
- more reading
- less spending – in order to knock down the demand loan on Chez Badass
I’ll be going into each of these goals in detail in upcoming blog posts. Yule see, hehehe!
I will leave you with this thought – at this special time of year why not remember to:
Merry Christmas and Rock on,
The WB
Same for me….and I work in retail, so I experience the commercialization on a more profound level than I did as a bank teller or college student. This year has been a dud financially, so my small family and I are not even exchanging gifts, and I barely got cards out. But they will spend Christmas with their family out of state, while my retail job does not permit me to, as I have to work the day before and after. But I will be spending it just eating, relaxing by myself, and watching my favorite Christmas movies!
Your Christmas day sounds pretty sweet to me, Kim. I will be doing much of the same. Looking forward to do a day of quiet relaxation, contemplation, and some painting. My kids will be at their dad’s on the 25th, so we are having our Christmas on Christmas Eve. No gifts either, just being together. Looking forward to it! Merry Christmas to you! Hope you get through the retail season without too much crap being hurled at you by insane shoppers.
I want to share that picture with EVERYONE.
Hehehe!
I may not know you well yet, but I know that this post is quintessential you and, therefore, I LOVE it! I’m spending an entire week on setting intentions for 2018 (I do tend to go rather insane on the year-end planning; well, actually, on planning anytime of the year), and am looking forward to hearing more about yours in your upcoming posts. A quick look at your list tells me that we’re on the same path. I want to do everything you’re doing except in writing I’m going to focus on some different writing. More about that in my next post!
And one damn – damn that I didn’t think about lots and lots of candles on the solstice. I had a couple of fires going in the fireplaces so will have to be content with that, but I’m mad at myself that I forgot the candles. Eesh.
I’m excited to be seeing what you’ll be posting Karen! It’s so nice to find a kindred spirit. Isn’t this a wonderful time of life that we are experiencing, after years of stress and work overload? Well, I’m still working so there’s no end of that for right now. But my attitude has changed greatly, and that makes all the difference. Hope you have a wonderful holiday making plans for a fantastic 2018!
So agree that Christmas is far too commercialised. I come from a big family so we have limited how much we spend on presents so it doesn’t get out of hand. Even so, I always spend too much, eat too much and drink too much and go into the New Year vowing to change my ways!
I suspect that ever since we humans gathered around a fire, we have always celebrated SOMETHING by overeating and altering our consciousness with some substance(s). These rituals are part of being human, I guess. And our ancient ancestors probably made resolutions too. It’s in our DNA to do this! There is no escape, no matter how hard we try…hehehe! Thanks for the comment!
omg Yul Brynner!! You know of course I will never be able to hear the word Yule again without thinking of this image!
I guess I’m not surprised that we both had the instincts to celebrate the solstice with fire 😉 I guess the difference is that you spent your time in thoughtful contemplation while I was working on a buzz 🙂
Well, you didn’t see the big honking glass of wine (of which I had 2 that night) just out of the frame of the shot. 😉
That’s the spirit!
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