What's Christmas Really About?
More more more Consciousness
The concept of Christmas has evolved a lot for me in this lifetime. I was raised in a fundamentalist, Bible-literalist version of Christianity that taught Christmas marked the actual birth of Jesus the one and only Christ. That, and a whole lot of other stuff, didn’t really make sense to me, but I rolled with it because I loved the Christmas trees, presents, cookies and Almond Roca.
In my mid-teens I walked away from conventional Christianity and began the journey of discovering what I genuinely believed. Born a nature lover, I gravitated toward indigenous and more nature-centric spiritual pathways. I learned about the spiritual aspect of solstices and that early Christians had chosen Dec. 25th as the date for Christmas in an effort to capture the interest of the pagans who celebrated Winter Solstice and various deities during that time of year. It’s important to note that though pagan is often given negative connotations, it simply means any person that holds religious or spiritual beliefs other than the mainstream, recognized religion. By that definition, the early Christians trying to blot out existing faith traditions could themselves have been classified pagan.
In my mid-thirties I discovered Unity and New Thought and began the long and not always comfortable process of unlearning much of what I’d been indoctrinated with as a kid. Over time I released damaging concepts such as original sin, and a punitive, wrathful God who demanded the horrific death of its own child.
More recently I’ve reclaimed and reframed many Christian concepts including Christ. Christ consciousness sparked into existence the moment Creation sparked into material form (maybe before but my mind can’t really get around that piece). Christ is not Jesus’ last name but rather, a level of consciousness we each have access to when we are awake to ourselves as spiritual beings and moving through the world viewing other beings in the same light. Jesus was a human being who fully remembered his Oneness with God/Source/Creator and fully embodied Christ consciousness. I’d been taught that Jesus was an unobtainable exception but I now view him as an exceptional example, a way shower. He figured out something supremely profound and urged us to discover it as well.
Interestingly, A Course in Miracles calls Christmas the “end of sacrifice” because it ties Christmas to deep forgiveness. This means not only forgiving others and ourselves but giving away the illusions of separation and aloneness, sin, fear and attack. It means thinking and moving from a place of deep, deep love. From such a place sacrifice has no meaning.
In Spanish “mas” means more – Christ-mas = more Christ consciousness. Christmas occurs every time we open to our Highest Self and see the Christ essence in all beings. The Course calls this seeing with Christ eyes rather than the body’s eyes. Personally, I’m a work in progress on this front but the emphasis is on the progress.
Despite the fact that there is no evidence Jesus was born Dec. 25th, it does make sense to celebrate the coming of more Christ light into the world just as we make the shift from longer, darker nights back toward the light and new growth of spring.
Along those lines I’ll close by sharing a wonderful and true story from the book, Humankind, by Rutger Bregman. The setting is the front lines of World War 1. In December 1914, just months into the war, already more than a million soldiers were dead. The front lines stretched some 500 miles and were marked by deep, filthy trenches from which the opposing sides fired at one another.
Bregman tells the story this way:
It’s Christmas Eve 1914. The night is clear and cold. Moonlight illuminates the snow-covered no man’s land separating the trenches outside the town of La Chapelle-d’Armentiéres. British High Command, feeling nervous, sends a message to the front lines: ‘It is thought possible the enemy may be contemplating an attack during Christmas or New Year. Special vigilance will be maintained during this period.’
The generals have no idea what’s really about to happen.
Around seven or eight in the evening, Albert Moren of the 2nd Queen’s Regiment blinks in disbelief. What’s that on the other side? Lights flicker on, one by one. Lanterns, he sees, and torches, and …. Christmas trees? That’s when he hears it: Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht. Never before had the carol sounded so beautiful. ‘I shall never forget it,’ Moren says later. ‘It was one of the highlights of my life.’
Not to be outdone, the British soldiers start up a round of ‘The First Noel’. The Germans applaud, and counter with ‘O Tannenbaum’. They go back and forth for a while, until finally the two enemy camps sing ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ in Latin, together. ‘This was really the most extraordinary thing’, rifleman Graham Williams later recalled, ‘two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.’
A Scottish regiment stationed just north of the Belgian town of Ploegsteert goes further still. From the enemy trenches, Corporal John Fergusen hears someone call out, asking if they want some tobacco. “Make for the light,’ shouts the German. So Fergusen heads out into no man’s land.
‘[We] were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years,’ he later wrote. ‘What a sight – little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Our of the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches […] Here we were laughing and chatting with men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!’
The next morning, Christmas Day, the bravest of the soldiers again climbed out the trenches. Walking past barbed wire they go over to shake hands with the enemy. Then they beckon to those who’d stayed behind. ‘We all cheered,’ remembered Leslie Walkington of the Queen’s Westminster Rifles, ‘and then we flocked out like a football crowd.’
Gifts are exchanged. The British offer chocolate, tea and puddings; the Germans share cigars, sauerkraut and schnapps. They crack jokes and take group photographs as though it’s a big, happy reunion.
In other aspects of this story the opposing sides played soccer games. They held a joint burial service mingling voices and accents to sing, “The Lord is my Shepherd/ Der Heir ist mein Hirt.” Soldiers began questioning the terrible things they’d been told about “the other” by their national media.
And here’s a beautiful point, the Christmas truce of 1914 was not an isolated case. Bregman notes similar things happened during the Spanish Civil War and the Boer Wars, as well as the American Civil War, the Crimean War and the Napoleonic Wars.
In this Christmas time I affirm such outbreaks of peace in how we treat fellow human beings, all beings, and this planet we are lucky enough to call home. That’s truly all I want for Christmas.
Merry Christmas each and every one!
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Merry Christmas!
Me Singing to You!
In further evidence of both my anti-consumerist enviro stance and my dorkiness I offer here for your listening (cringing) pleasure two of my favorite anti-consumerist Christmas carols.
Merry Christmas All!
I liked hearing the explanation of a Christ consciousness that has been available to all of us forever. Thank you for the concert! Here’s to your spirit and journey in the New Year!