Happy Holidays!

[Storm]

No, I'm not being PC; I celebrate two (well, I've lapsed, but still): my own weird take on Winter Solstice, and (gasp!) Christmas. I thought I'd take a moment to explain why. ETA: For anyone confused by my terminology, the OP of the thread linked in my sig is a glossary.

Christmas first:
I believe Jesus was an Avatar. From my theology thread:
Avatars/Elders incarnate:
Elders can incarnate to teach important lessons directly; these incarnations are Avatars. Avatar refers specifically to the mortal vessel, whereas Elder incarnate refers to the rhys. The hallmark of Avatars is that their lives illustrate the message they taught. This isn't a definitive trait, but it is a very reliable clue.
Elders:
Those individual rhys who have fully Become. Guides and teachers for their younger siblings (us). Somewhat akin to the bodhisattvas of some Buddhist sects.

So, I honor Him in my own way, and that includes celebrating His birth.

I know, I know, he wasn't actually born on December 25th, and probably not even in winter. I don't care.

I feast, I gift, and I take Communion (or whatever the Protestants call it).

Why Communion, you ask? Because, all theology aside, it's how He asked to be remembered.

Then there's the Solstice, from my neopagan days.
The Solstice, to me, marks the rebirth of the Dying God, and the transformation of the Goddess from Crone to Maiden, making it the perfect holiday in which to also honor the miracle of children.

While I'm no longer neopagan, I still find tremendous value and meaning in doing this.

On the night of the Solstice, I stay awake until dawn, preferably telling stories to the kids. No light is allowed at first, in recognition of the Dying God's link to the sun. When the first glimmer of light appears on the horizon, someone (preferably male) ceremoniously lights a candle, to signify the Dying God's rebirth.

Then comes the celbration: again, giving gifts to children, feasting, and generally making merry.


Please not that this thread is in the UU DIR. IF there's something you wish to debate, I invite you to create a spin-off thread in an appropriate area.

So, to all my friends (and even those of you I detest ) a happy holidays!

 

[Storm]

So, last night I went to the Young Adults Spiritual Circle, and th topic was Christmas.

I had the surreal experience of being the most Christian person in the room. Not wrt to Jesus' teachings, but the religious trappings.

I thought it rather funny.

 

[Baydwin]

So, last night I went to the Young Adults Spiritual Circle, and th topic was Christmas.

I had the surreal experience of being the most Christian person in the room. Not wrt to Jesus' teachings, but the religious trappings.

I thought it rather funny.

So, were there lots of anti-Christian pagans there?

 

[Storm]

So, were there lots of anti-Christian pagans there?

No, mostly live and let live atheists and assorted non-believers.

It was just weird being the ONLY person with ANY religious ties to Christmas whatsoever.

 

[Baydwin]

How come there were so many atheists and non-believers at a "spiritual circle"?

 

[Storm]

Dude, it's a UU church.

The Spiritual Circles are basically a discussion group for the Young Adults community. Some are more spiritual than others. Last one was personality types.

 

[Baydwin]

I notice that you seem to keep the celebration of Christmas and the solstice quite separate. Do you do so because of respect to the different traditions, or because they were not easy to syncretise?
And what do you think of traditions, such as Christian Wicca, that do attempt such a synchronisation of diverse belief systems?

 

[Storm]

I notice that you seem to keep the celebration of Christmas and the solstice quite separate. Do you do so because of respect to the different traditions, or because they were not easy to syncretise?

More the former, but it honestly never occured to me to blend them.

And what do you think of traditions, such as Christian Wicca, that do attempt such a synchronisation of diverse belief systems?

I admire their resourceful creativity! LOL

Seriously, I don't know how they do it, much less why, but if it works for them, I wish them well.

 

[Charity]

Happy Holidays to you Storm, and I wish the best for you in the coming New Year...olarbaby:

 

[Storm]

Thank you, sweetie! Same to you. :hug:

 

[Kathryn]

I celebrate the solstices because I believe that God made them and they're a cool thing. I like the symbolism as well.

Just because something isn't cloaked in a religious dogma doesn't make it "pagan" in the negative sense of the word.

I never have understood why some religious people are so paranoid about celebrating the cycles of nature and the very cool, pretty much universal, human celebrations that revolve around the natural world.

 

[cloudedice]

As I mentioned in another thread, my plan for next year is to do something similar. I'm a Neopagan while my wife is a non-practicing Christian. We plan on letting our kids choose their own religion.

I've always celebrated Christmas since that's what my family and my wife's family does. I intend to keep that tradition, but next year I'm going to add a Winter Solstice celebration. The plan is to have a nice family meal then to tell the stories of different religious/cultural holidays nearby. (Chanukah, Jesus' birth, Holly and Oak Kings, Santa Claus, etc.)

While my son will be too young to understand what's going on (he should be born any day now...), I hope it will become a tradition for us to celebrate all the love and cheer of this season.

 

[EverChanging]

Storm, your celebration sounds very beautiful and similar in some ways to how I observed the holidays this year. Thank you for sharing.

For a long time, I've celebrated different traditions and ways of worshiping, praying, and meditating, and I think for the first time, my own worship is taking a more concrete, stable form, and I never thought it would look like it does now, but I'm learning on my own path that we must simply accept what is, and my worship is what it is. I have a tendency to merge conflicting worldviews, and I fought it for a long time, I think simply because other people that I identify with in many ways -- neopagans, atheists, humanists, pantheists and even Christians -- would not understand it, and I guess that leaves me feeling like I don't belong to any group, eclectic as I am. But I'm okay with that. My own religious labels on these forums are just that, labels, and labels will never encompass an entire worldview and way of being.

I make resolutions every Solstice and Equinox. During the school year, I worship on these days with my neo-pagan friends, but this Solstice I was on my own, so I observed Yule with meditation and prayer at my own altar and honored the coming of the light, the rebirth of the god, symbolic of the rebirth of the solar year and increasing light. I was up all night, and I simply enjoyed the time to myself. After my rituals, I worked on my resolutions and reviewed the time since the last quarter point of the year in my journal: I've kept one for years. It has become a very comforting tradition for me to review my life and goals at each Solstice and Equinox, and I look forward to it.

As far as I'm concerned, Yule, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Advent, the Solstice -- all of these are beautiful to me and a part of traditions that go back thousands of years all over the world -- they are universal, a part of one another...the strict lines we draw between them are just that, lines -- not real divisions. So on Christmas Eve I continued my celebration of this entire season with my friend Becky while she was in the area. We exchanged gifts and went to a midnight mass together -- Christ is the same to me as the god or the solar year in some ways -- and I celebrated Christmas with my family in the usual way, along with my own reflection and meditations. It has all been very peaceful and nice to me. To me, Christmas is not "just" a Christian holiday -- it is a constellation of cultural traditions that have developed all over the world for centuries before Christianity, so there is no conflict to me in celebrating Yule, a midnight mass (communion is also not just strictly Christian, though I *usually* honor it in the Christian way, at least when I don't take it alone), and Christmas -- all of these are a part of the same season to me. I don't strictly syncretise them, either. I don't feel a need to, in light of their similarities. They are all my way of celebrating universal natural events. And to be honest (and I guess this comes from the neopagan elements of my practices), I don't need a big reason to celebrate. It's just fun and meaningful to me.

 

[Storm]

bump!

 

[Breathe]

Happy holidays!
What are your plans for this year?

 

[Storm]

Happy holidays!
What are your plans for this year?

Spending near a month in Texas with the family. I can probably talk a few members into keeping the Solstice with me. Especially if going to a Christian service for Communion placates the fundies....

I hope so, anyway.