Gareth’s Blog

This is the first year as an adult that I have not had Christmas colored by my employer. As a practicing Zen Buddhist, Christmas had already taken on new meaning for me, but without the noise of a Christmas tree in the lobby, and endless office parties and business Christmas cards, it is cleaner, simpler. That we celebrate it with such intensity under many names gives lie to its official title. Why should anyone get upset about a name that has been left behind as a legacy for a festival of consumption that is celebrated in the nominally Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Shinto worlds fascinates me.

Mostly I now see how Christmas heightens and intensifies. It takes our avorice and magnifies it so that we fight in the stores over toys that will be soon forgotten. But at the same time it magnifies our sense of family, as we gather round the tree and the piles of presents, and it magnifies our sense our sense of social responsibility, as ever more gifts are given in the form of a heffer in Uganda, medical care for a Senegalese family, and as we take advantage of the final tax deduction for the year with charitable giving.

I experience great joy as I watch the children - including my own - revel in the feast, and a greater intensity of awareness of all the human acticvity around me. If only we could take this joy and awareness with us as we enter a new year, and enjoy it in our simpler, everyday lives.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 24th, 2006 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.