How to Have a Growthful Christmas
Tags: Gay, Christmas, Personal Development, Depression, Coaching

(Even when your family is absent or tricky)

I found myself talking with a friend this morning about “Christmas”, who was a bit lost. I think many of us feel this way at Christmas, particularly this year.

For many 1000s of years in the Northern Hemisphere this was a winter festival: Solstice or Yule. It was a time to gather close with those in your tribe, your family, your community. Nearly every culture has important festivals to celebrate the changing of the seasons, to give life more meaning, to strengthen our connections, not divide us — and they were never about consumption until quite recently: Hanukkah, Ramadan, Diwali, fill in the gap.

Gifts have always been exchanged to strengthen alliances but they didn’t need to be expensive. The best gifts I have ever received have been poems, tasty homemade things, donations in my name. Lewis Hyde’s The Gift is a great book for exploring this.

Due to the global dominance of the forces like Western Imperialism, colonialism, Christianity and capitalism, physical and electronic colonialism, the world has been held hostage and made to swallow the media stories that put us under pressure to conform to the old paradigm that is dying. To feel perhaps individually responsible for propping up the broken systems which need structural and systemic change at every level. Filling the void left by our loss of connection by spending to the max on stuff we don’t need, especially at Christmas, to replace time together we will never get back.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, or worse still. It takes only a split second to see how the old stories are dying and The New is being called in.

Think just for a moment, of every comment, every media image you have ever seen, every song lyric, every expression of culture amplified that has led you to think, feel and act at this time of year in a certain way. Think about your use of Netflix, Facebook, the music industry, celebrity culture, memes and tropes and other forms of visual culture. Then remember that is all being filtered through a system designed to keep you poor, scared and trapped.

There is an old saying in the personal growth world: “The Bishop and the King got together a long time ago. The King said, I’ll keep them poor and you keep them guilty. Then we have the whole thing sorted.”

Think about What If? What if this Christmas could be different? What if this global moosh we are in could seed new beginnings? What if a new possibility was arising?

Before Christianity came along, before capitalism; Winter Solstice for the Northern people was a time of sacred communion with the earth and each other. Not because one great teacher was born under a star and his words co-opted by those wanting power (and yes, by some to heal and serve), or because shareholders were baying for even higher dividends. But because we were all born, and one day, would die. Because life and connection was sacred. Connection to self, other and earth.

We would celebrate the abundance of what we had harvested, feasting with our nearest and dearest to say “Look! We are still here! You matter to me. I want to break bread and share my abundance with you. You are in my tribe. You are in my heart. Let’s go through the long dark nights ahead together, support one another, and hopefully survive another year.”

As we separated from the earth and each other, from ourselves, the nuclear family became the primary consumption unit, the place of social support. It worked for a while, kind of. But then women were allowed an education and even a vote! Strangers and even husbands (as was usually the case) could no longer legally rape. Almost overnight, in terms of deep time, women had agency again. Never forget how recently this happened. My father could legally rape my mother. He didn’t but he could. There was no law to stop him. Can you imagine?

So the family started to break down, for many reasons, partly because women no longer had to put up with being treated like shit. Because the old dying paradigm of patriarchy, capitalism, materialism and many other forces have been pulling us apart for too long.

Strong women with wisdom and magic a.ka. witches could no longer be burned at the stake and vilified as Eve had been from the beginning of the Christian / Patriarchal plot.

So many have suffered and been smothered by their family: men, women, children and elders. Mobility, for better or worse, has allowed many of us to choose where we live and play, with whom, and how. We are social creatures, we need each other. Often we end up far from the people we love or indeed those who cannot love us at this time — our families.

So many have been held in intergenerational cycles of trauma and dysfunction that would not allow us to heal, while being made to feel guilty if we do not perform and fit the norms of what these forces demand. For many of my clients, it has been essential to separate, and indeed we must all go forth and find ourselves, before being able to return to our people and places of origin as true individuals. That is the hero/ine’s journey. But unlike Joseph Campbell’s popular telling of the story, it is not to become individualistic in the way of the lone wolf against the odds, but in interbeing with all that is as Sharon Blackie, Thich Nhat Hanh and many others lead us towards. We are all one, with the family of humankind.

So many families have broken down, some have thrived (or at least pretended to on their Facebook feeds) and new forms are emerging. This Christmas or Solstice, more than 1 in 3 families will be blended from post-divorce and other scenarios. Many more will gather away from their family of origin and many only online or in very small numbers due to the pandemic.