Seasonal Gifts of the Spirit.
By: Sylvia Clare Msc. Psychol
Tags: Prompt, Celebrations Memories, Spiritual Awakening, Xmas, Love

Xmas is a time of good cheer and family get togethers. That is the image. That is the hope and expectations of most people. But what happens if you start to see a different underlying energy to that seasonal activity. A darker side that is also there intrinsically contained within that festivity.

When I grew up, as a child, every Christmas, every birthday, no matter how kind and generous those around me were, my mother always took it away from me. She would say things like ‘aren’t you lucky to have ‘that’, mind you don’t play with it and break it.’ So it sat there unenjoyed- a thing of shame or guilt and an expression of my own unworthiness. That was her intention of course, as someone whose jealousy knew no bounds and whose psychopathic narcissism was completely in control of our whole family.

This was her gift too, a deeply spiritual challenge hidden behind a dark energy of her superficial intention, because it challenged me to look more deeply at those expectations and rituals of various seasons. So please don’t think I am telling any kind of sob story. It has really been a gift, even if it was wrapped in razor wire to begin with.

Photo by Євгенія Височина on Unsplash

Each season brings its own celebrations, and rituals to some extent too. We are all expected somehow to share in the social outpouring of whatever it is meant to be. I have had so many very mixed experiences of all these celebrations that I find myself in early old age not wanting to even acknowledge them anymore. It is as if the joy and excitement has gone completely stale and empty. But I don’t see that as a bad thing, instead I consider it a dropping of the illusion of the purely material world

This slow inexorable decline has been brought about as much as anything by the materialism that surrounds most of them, that and the obligations that are imposed on us all and cause as much distress as any joy they bring. How much stress is caused by Christmas preparations? We have none.

I want to emphasise here that it is not the actual event that bothers me, but what they have mostly all become, at least in my world.

We have stepped back and said ‘no more’ to it all. We have informed all our nearest and dearest that our generosity will continue but will no longer be tied to marketing rituals and expectations. Instead they will be tailored to meet the needs, or pleasures and happiness of those people at random moments through life.

Now we make sure we actually pay attention to what members of our family and close people actually express, mostly unconsciously, and do our best to show our love at those moments. We look and listen deeply to how we might support them most of all. We pay them profound attention.

We have replaced specific ritual days for everyday if you like. At any point, a gift may appear that is just the thing at the right moment, if we know about it.

How much more precious is the unexpected gift or expression of love?

I remember how, after my sons reached the age of not making mother’s day cards at school for me, I asked them not to buy me anything out of duty or a sense of obligation. They complied happily enough.

One year, and decades later, I got a text from them, independently and unbeknownst to each other and quite out of the blue, both telling me how much I meant to them as their mum. Can you imagine how much those texts meant to me? There are no words to describe. Honestly, it was the total best thing that could have happened for me because they both ‘WANTED’ to tell me that and did it simply and in their own way, not commercially or dutifully.

Duty is not love, instead it is obligation and can easily enough be a burden and source of stress too.

My sons are not obliged to love me. I made plenty of mistakes when they were growing up. I gave them the gift of freedom from that but they love me from their own free will. How wonderful that gift is.

My husband and I also made an agreement not to do commercial things like dinner, bought flowers and cards for anniversaries, birthdays, valentines and all the other plethora of ritual invented by the industries that make money out of such things.

As we get older and deeper into our marriage though we are getting more sentimental. In retirement or semi-retirement we have more time too, so we go for a special walk together instead, give each other special time really paying attention to each other and not allowing the rest of our lives to distract from each other as usual.

Someone asked my husband what he was doing for me for Valentine’s day one year and his reply was that every day was Valentine’s day with me. And that is how I feel too. Every day is a special celebration of love and life. Every day is a joyful celebration of how much I love my sons and grandson and friends and other family too. Every day is that celebration, so there is no special day, no single obligatory ritual day in which to celebrate this love and connection. It is present all the time.

One of the lovely rituals we have invented for ourselves as a couple though is to buy or do something special together each year, maybe a trip, or buy a piece of sculpture or art that would normally be out of our budget range. But by not spending money on all the gifts we might have felt obliged to purchase through the year, we can share in something very special that we both will appreciate into the future. And hopefully, if it is a piece of art-work of some kind, it is also something we can leave behind for one of our family members to remember us by. When the time comes, we shall invite them all to pick their favourites and take them before we go, when our lives are reduced by age and increasing decrepitude as to not matter anymore.

In the end materialism is a pointless value system which we have all been brainwashed into believing is the path to happiness. It actually separates us from each other far more effectively, especially on the bigger stage

And I fear that festivities such as Xmas have become much the same thing.

We shall have a lovely family meal if practical, with an aged mother, if she makes it that long, and that is in question at present anyway. Life and death are all part of the same cycle, like winter and summer.