Happy Holidays

We’ve taken another turn around the sun, and the season of winter celebrations is upon us... Bodhi Day, Solstice, Yule, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year. In this time of long nights and cold days, we humans like to gather together to celebrate the Light, to re-affirm our faith that Spring is coming and the earth will warm again. We look forward to the promise of Spring with its dramatic re-birth, and we hope for a similar awakening of spiritual wisdom. Let’s take a look at some traditions that might be different from our own.

Bodhi Day, December 8, is the date Buddhists celebrate Siddhartha Gautama’s realization and presentation of the Four Noble Truths. From then on, he was called the Buddha, the Enlightened One. This day for meditation is a good time to practice Dogen’s Four Methods: giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and seeing others as self.

Solstices are the moments of the year when the sun reaches its most southern or northern position. At Winter Solstice, we have the most darkness and least daylight. Solstice festivals were common in most ancient cultures to mark the time when we turn from darkness back toward light. With each passing day of autumn we are robbed of more daylight. But at winter solstice, we turn the corner: the shortest day is reached, and from then on we can only gain daylight, imperceptibly, but inexorably.

In Celtic mythology the “Oak King” and the “Holly King” were twins, pitted against each other in a never-ending fight for supremacy. As cold weather approached, the Celts marveled at how the evergreen holly trees, hidden among the leafy oaks the rest of the year, now dominated the otherwise barren landscape. The Holly King had won out, as the oaks had shed all their leaves and stood naked in defeat. But on the winter solstice, the Oak King begins to reestablish his supremacy, reaching its zenith in mid-summer, when oaks are in full leaf again. Ironically, whenever either king reaches the height of his dominance, at that very time he begins to be supplanted. There’s a lesson there.

Yule celebrations were held in northern Europe at winter solstice long before Christianity. Yule means wheel, a symbol for the sun, and yuletide celebrated the turning of the sun toward spring. In the Icelandic sagas Yule was a time for feasting, dancing, and sacrificing a pig for the god Freyr, a tradition which survives in the Scandinavian Christmas ham. Worshipped as a fertility god, Freyr bestows “peace and pleasure” upon mortals... and we can all use that! Many of the old customs of Yule - the Yule log, hanging boughs, holly, mistletoe - were simply reinterpreted when Christianity arrived. The yule log was a huge log (sometimes an entire tree) that was burned slowly throughout these days to herald the birth of the new sun.

Hanukkah means “dedication” and is the Jewish commemoration of the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem. After occupiers were driven from the Temple, the Maccabees took down the pagan statues and looked for ritually purified olive oil to light a Menorah to rededicate the Temple. But they found only enough oil for a single day. Miraculously, that tiny amount of oil burned for the eight days it took to have new oil pressed and made ready. Jews light a candle on the menorah each night of Hanukkah, the “festival of lights” that also reaffirms the struggle to live by God’s commandments.

Kwanzaa, held in the U.S. from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, honors African-American heritage. Founded in 1966 as an alternative to the growing commercialism of Christmas, Kwanzaa is a non-religious, cultural festival, based on African harvest celebrations. The name derives from Swahili for “first fruits”, with an added “a” to make seven letters, one for each of the Seven Principles of Blackness. Each day a candle in a Kinara is lit and dedicated to one of the Principles: Unity, Self-determination, Collective work & responsibility, Cooperative economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith.

Four Sundays before Christmas, Christian tradition celebrates Advent, Latin for “the coming,” a time of spiritual reflection and preparation as we await the birth of Jesus. Rich with symbolism, the Advent Candle Wreath's circle reminds us of oneness and perfection. The evergreen branches symbolize eternity and life, even in the dead of winter. The candles represent the Light of God coming into the world. The first candle to be lit is the candle of Hope... followed by Peace , then Joy, and finally Love. A fifth white candle is lit on Christmas to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Christmas literally means the Mass of Christ., and therefore is the religious ceremony celebrating Christ’s birth. Of course that hasn’t stopped us from turning it into a secular celebration of consumerism! Giving gifts has long been associated with Christmas... you can blame that on the Wise Men! Lest we get too cynical, remember that the gifts are an outward expression of our love for others, of our desire to share and take care of them. They allow us to tune into the grace of giving, which is surely a step of every spiritual path. Charity is up, and Santa loves everyone.

At this time of year, we gather to sing together, to feast on the bounty that Mother Earth has provided, to remember our rich heritage of traditions, to catch the joy as we exercise our wondrous power to give gifts, and to feel the warmth of community.

As a child in Connecticut, I loved a quiet night-time snowfall. Illumined by a few lights, the snow would sparkle as it fell, piling up in pure white drifts, muffling all sounds but the gentle “shush” of the snow. Waking up to a world of wonder and a day of “no school” was a treat. In the quiet of a winter snowfall, it’s easy to tune into a deep peace, as we cocoon with loved ones. Together we brave the storms and are warmed by each other’s love.

But when a holiday is over, there’s snow to shovel, bills to pay, and “stuff” to be done. How quickly we get sucked back into “business as usual.” From the “Mass of Christ”, we go back to the mess of our lives... and we wonder how to get the magic back.

And so we come to the New Year... the time for Resolutions. We make ‘em... and not much later, we break ‘em, but at least we stop to think about where our life is going, what we’ve tucked into memory, and where we want to go from here. These Resolutions are our expression to grow, to change, to learn, to keep evolving into the Light we want to see in the world, the Light we want to be in the world.

Happy holidays! Make we make each day a holy day!

--Lytingale
© 2005 Lois J. Henrickson (Lytingale)