Just hearing these words – without seeing them – brings me back to church hymns of my youth. This month hymns and carols and traditional music are all around us. Many of us are even hearing and singing them…without much attention to the words. It’s a time of year when I think we do a lot of things without much attention. We run on automatic at the very time it would serve us to be more intentional.
Whatever holidays you celebrate this month, chances are there is much to do. Decorating, shopping, planning, cooking, packing, delivering, mailing. There’s so much packed into the few weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day that it hardly seems there could even be room for “holes.” And yet, they’re there: those spaces between what we’re doing and what it all really means. It isn’t always easy to acknowledge that our observance of holidays – those days we hold sacred and dear – could have holes, could be incomplete. But in the busy-ness, it’s easy to rush past meaning in our efforts to just get it all done. How many times, for instance, have you pulled out the Christmas decorations before the Thanksgiving dishes were even dry, and then spent New Year’s Day packing them all away in a hurry to “get the house back to normal”? Did you get to enjoy them, remembering the trip to Mexico where you purchased the tiny bird ornament made of clay? Or what about thinking of how your parents lit the candles on this very same menorah? Or was getting them put out and then put away just another chore on your to-do list?
Can we fill the holes? Perhaps. And perhaps focusing on the holiness of our holidays is a way to do so. Regardless of your tradition, holidays in this season are all holy in some way. (I’m assuming that’s where the word holiday came from, in the first place!) Beyond the decorating, shopping, cooking and parties, there are – to borrow the phrase – the reasons for the season. If we put first the true meaning of our holidays, the real reason we have them in the first place, our priorities become clear, making it easier for us to follow suit with our actions.
We might do this in very simple ways – reading and meditating on sacred texts, attending services with family and friends, spending some time working with a favorite charity, spending time in nature, breathing in the grandeur, or just stopping and breathing and listening – being attentive, regardless of where we are. We can bring our focus back to what it is that makes our holidays holy. Can’t we?
That’s a tall order – celebrating the true and holy bases for our holidays and still take care of the shopping and wrapping and party planning. Can we possibly do all of that and remain whole ourselves? How do we make it to January 1st with the energy to move into a new year with excitement and purpose?
What if we don’t have to do it all? Try making a “Not to Do” list this year. Include those things that you’ve felt pressured to take care of in the past, but that you really don’t enjoy and that aren’t even critical to your celebration of the holiday. Then, don’t do them.
In his book, “Hundred Dollar Holiday: the Case for a More Joyful Christmas,” author Bill McKibben writes, “The reason the holidays are wonderful is because there remains a residual set of traditions from before hyper-consumerism, of being together with friends and family, and doing things like singing carols that connect you with other people. Most of the best traditions of Christmas and other holidays pre-date the current commercial celebrations, and they’re among the things that we need to recapture even as we invent new celebrations.”
If we take an honest look at our priorities, we can probably separate those things we do out of a sense of obligation and duty from those in which we truly find joy. It is then that we can celebrate the holy, wholly.
