A PERMISSION TO EXTEND CHRISTMAS
WHY IS CHRISTMAS IS SO BELOVED? As an adult, I’m not a “Christmassy” person. But I was reflecting on why my childhood memories of the times of Christmas were so powerfully fond. It wasn’t the gifts. I could have done without them. I discovered… It was the gift of “who people were being.”
During this deep dive and reflection into these childhood memories, I learned a lot. I discovered my strong affinity for the times of this holiday was because (through a child’s eyes) I observed people being more godly to one another; more thoughtful, more kind, more generous. More human. And it felt GOOD.
The time was like an excuse to love and be loved.
As children, from that pint-sized perspective, (think of it:) the holidays were a time when your soul could breathe more, and the world just made more sense. There seemed to be less conflict between adults, less pettiness, less bad and confusing vibes.
Remember, as children we’re stuck, unconsciously awash in the daily emotional atmospheres of adults — and often those atmospheres are just (dare I say it) toxic — especially for a child who doesn’t understand what is sometimes the perpetual hostilities of adult life.
Holidays, notably, Christmas, is and was always an annual reprieve from this.
For me, as a child, it was a time when adults acted like they had better sense toward one another. It seemed like “better sense” because LOVE is always the smartest course of action (obviously). Young children can see this sage truth clearly, before blemished by the world’s indoctrination. Better said, the world’s ‘toxification.”
This leaves me with a final Christmas contemplation...
Can we be these holiday people more often throughout our year—creating a vibrational field for children (and for the children in us)—an emotional field of warmth, acceptance, and relational communion?
Is it possible?
If “the holidays” (i.e. holy days) are the 8-days between the 25th and the 1st, then what are the other 357 days of our year? The Un-Holy Days? I’ll leave that to you to confirm or deny.
Perhaps when we understand what we really get from this holiday, we can choose to CONSCIOUSLY extend the core enjoyment of what we’ve made this time become about. Think deeply on that.
And of course... sure the holiday is invented, borrowed and repackaged. Sure it has no historically accurate correspondence to the birth of the Christian sage; etc. Every theologian knows this. But it can still be a time to recognize what that sage’s lived example was ultimately aiming to be about. LOVE.
Just…
More days of lived love.

— A
