Resisting the Humbug

The Christmas season, which agonizingly starts sooner and sooner as the years go by, has never been a great source of inspiration for me. As a child I was deeply immersed in the commercialization aspect of the holidays - the baby Jesus, the reason for the season, was a very distant afterthought. So long as the stockings were stuffed by the chimney with or without care and the tree was morbidly obese with presents of all shapes and sizes, then Christmas was classified a success.

Despite being a lifer in the welfare system, my mother stretched herself far beyond her measly gift-buying budget to make holidays such as Easter and Christmas memorable for us kids. I am quite certain looking back that her well-to-do boyfriend of many years was the silent benefactor who made it all possible. And even though presents were bountiful in our little corner of the Ontario Housing project, there was always something that seemed to be missing.

The religious significance of Christmastime was not at the forefront of our celebrations. In fact, we never-ever prayed, said grace, talked about God, or silently acknowledged the presence of anything remotely spiritual. I once saw a book in my mother's bedroom called Seth Speaks, which was about a medium that channeled Seth, a spirit bound entity who offered observations and advice about humanity. I was much too scared to ask my mom about the book but that was the closest I ever got to acknowledging anything quasi-spiritual in my childhood.

In my younger years and throughout my early adulthood I explored Christianity to see if I could fit into its awkward cultural mitten. I was even baptized, twice! It didn't take. No matter how much I explored the faith and no matter how much I wanted to believe, I could never wrap my head and heart around God and Jesus and the whole religious experience. Even the 10 plus years I devoted to 12 Step programs and their insistence on a relationship with a Higher Power as the foundation of successful and ongoing recovery did not enlighten my spirit or provide any useful connection to someone or something metaphysical.

Clearly, a religious focus was not one that would bring any meaning or enjoyment to Christmas, in spite of the obvious, yet often overlooked, connection. Since I have abandoned any hope of divining meaning from its religious and commercial cornerstones, I am left to embrace the humbugness of the season or create some meaningful ideologies and traditions beyond the embedded social and cultural paradigms that we all know and love and hate accordingly.

My five-year-old daughter is ripe and ready to attach some meaning to this widely publicized holiday season. In antithesis to every social norm, I have already demystified Christmas by revealing (SPOILER ALERT!!!!) that Santa Claus is not real. She is already aware of the fictions of fairy tales and the Jolly Old Elf is but one more example of this. In a large part, the story of Jesus is another magical retelling of a fabled alchemist - but the religious knot is much more difficult to untangle and explain to a little person.

Despite my best efforts to de-mythologize Christmas for my impressionable child, she is virtually unable to resist the mesmerizing iconography of the Yuletide season and the promise of an avalanche of neatly wrapped presents. She has one foot in reality and another in the magic and mystery of childhood's dreamworld. And so it ought to be. No amount of pulling back the curtains on my part will ever diminish her tendency and willingness to believe in the unbelievable.

What I really want is to create something meaningful and inspirational to the inevitable holidays in which we in western civilization are socialized. If that can happen, then perhaps more meaningful traditions can be experienced by my daughter and the generations to follow. I suppose what bothers me most about Christmas, and what I would like to see transformed, is the insatiable focus on getting rather than what gifts we have to give. I would like to instill in my daughter a greater sense of what she can give to others and how she can be a contribution to the lives of others, with little to no interest in what she might receive in return.

It may sound like I am attempting to overturn the law attraction or the law of giving and receiving, where both reciprocal aspects are critical to its unfolding, but it has more to do with raising a child who is attentive and concerned with the needs and desires of others, as well as her own. When we focus on what we have to give we generate energy that dispels humbug attitudes and feelings. If everyone on this tiny globe would be concerned only with what they could contribute maybe then we could experience true peace on Earth and goodwill toward all.