The "It's A Good Life" Jar

Today is December 27, 2014.  There are four days left until the new year is upon us...and I'm actually remembering to start a project that I saw months ago on Pinterest which really spoke to me:  setting up a jar to collect memories of good times in.

I have picked out a jar.  It's our old cookie jar from when the kids were little.  It's nothing particularly unique - just a pressed glass jar, probably a reproduction, that I picked up many years ago.  With no children in the house and therefore no need/excuse to make cookies and keep them around, the jar has just been stored in the basement for years, gathering dust.

Said cookie jar has now been washed and dried, and it is sitting in the place of honor on a beautiful, new-to-us, carved table that was a special Christmas gift from friends Flip & Shelley.  Our old cookie jar is becoming our new "It's a Good Life" Jar.  Into this jar, I plan to place slips of paper anytime something happens that makes me feel lucky or blessed or particularly happy or just glad to be alive.  Hopefully, Greg will join in too.  On December 31st next year, I (we) will take out all of the slips of paper and have a wonderful record of the good things that 2015 has brought into our lives.

Yes, this is a little touchy-feely, to use Greg's favorite dismissive desciptor for activities or comments that look beyond the reality of day-to-day living, but that's okay.  A little touchy-feely-ness is a good thing, in my book, because remembering to be grateful for the positives in my life has always made me feel better overall.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think it would be a good thing for all of us to make a special point of cultivating gratefulness.  In fact, sometimes I think that one of the reasons Americans are so stressed nowadays is that we, as a whole, aren't very good about realizing how much good is already in our lives.  Yesterday reminded me of this:  the emphasis in the U.S. on December 26th is "After Christmas Sales", and this morning our paper reported that many people were disappointed at those sales yesterday.  Compare that to "Boxing Day" on December 26th in Great Britain.  For years I had heard the term and thought it referred to the sport of boxing, which I was at a loss to connect to Christmas.  Just recently I learned that Boxing Day is actually a day put aside for boxing up your extra stuff - the stuff that you just don't need or use anymore - and giving it away to those who could use it.  Isn't that a wonderful holiday?! What a great way to be thankful for all the new we received the day before from friends and family!  What a great way to focus on the good in our lives and try to pass along some of our wealth to others!

So I'm cultivating a new tradition in my life to celebrate my gratefulness.  For starters, I must say that I'm grateful to Pinterest for the idea!

The Different Faces of Christmas

We're having a quiet Christmas this year, even quieter than usual.  For the first time since the birth of our elder child over 30 years ago, we won't be celebrating the season with either of our children.  Our daughter is a physician in Florida, on call for the week of Christmas, then going with her boyfriend to his parents' home over New Year's.  Our son has run out of vacation days and is unable to take time off until after the new year.  We were all together over Thanksgiving and had a wonderful time enjoying each others' company, so it's not as much of a hole as it might have been.  In fact, once I got the gifts bought, wrapped, and in the mail, having a quiet Christmas has allowed me to slow down a bit and philosophize.  What in the world is going on with the Christmas holidays these days?

There's so much angst over Christmas right now.  Expectations are sky high.  Time is tight and precious; there never seems to be enough time to get everything done.  Money seems to become scarcer every year.  Commercialism is through the roof and starts before the leaves turn in the fall.  Manipulative calls about a "War on Christmas" turn even a simple greeting of goodwill into a perceived assault against religion.

How can we get some sanity back into the season and into our celebrations of it?  Or has the entire holiday just become an excuse for excess that needs to be excised?

I'm thinking that the answer to that pair of questions is different for different people, depending on their understanding of Christmas...and I've come to recognize that there are many different perceptions and expectations for this major holiday in western culture.

I'm going to ignore some basic (and pretty important) expectations for Christmas, like the perceived need by store owners to make a lot of money during this time of year.  I want to think about and look at the understandings and expectations of the average person at this time of year...in as much as I consider myself to be an "average person," I guess, because mostly I've been thinking about MY personal understandings and expectations for Christmas.

Nowadays, I see 3 different faces of Christmas every year.  The first "face" of Christmas is the religious event that is being marked in Christianity, the birth of Christ.  Without looking it up, I'm assuming that the word, "Christmas", is a shortening of Christ Mass - a mass in celebration of Christ.  "Christ is the reason for the season."  "Let's put Christ back in Christmas."  And so on and so forth.  If a person is a Christian, then I'm all for them celebrating Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Christ.  To me, personally, though, there are further depths and meaning to this holiday.

In thinking about my frustration with the rallying cries about the "War on Christmas", I've realized that I see an important second face to Christmas.  To me, the Christmas holiday has meaning as a time to celebrate our love for our friends and family, to demonstrate to those who are important to us just how much we care about them, to spend our precious time with them.  Valentine's Day is our day to celebrate our pair bond, if we're lucky enough to be part of a pair, but Christmas is broader - a way to celebrate, as families and friends, the important bonds between and among our family members and within our community-of-choice.

Gifts, then, become a physical manifestation of our bonds of affection - a message that we understand and care about what our loved ones need and want, that we want our loved ones to be happy.  Unfortunately, as our time has become ever more taken up with working away from our homes, gifts have become charged with larger and heavier emotional burdens:  "I'm unable to spend as much time with you as I'd like to, because I have to pay the bills, but this wonderful present will show you how well I know you and how much I love you."   Of course, physical presents will never take the place of time spent together, no matter how much money we spend, but still we try. 

One thing we don't have to try to do any more is petition the sun to start shining again.  This is the third face of Christmas that I've become aware of, and it's the oldest face by far.  Christmas comes shortly after the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night.  The ancients didn't know what caused the sun to start shining less and less each fall, so they were concerned that some day the sun might just disappear, leaving them in permanent darkness.  Each year, as the days got shorter and darker, the ancients would pray to the sun and the earth spirits to bring back the light and the warmth.  Of course, each year after Winter Solstice, the sun would start to shine a little bit more and, in a few months, the warmth would return as well, bringing the bounty of spring and summer with it.  Each year, the petitions were successful!

These days, with our understanding of the tilt of the Earth's axis and its rotation around the sun, even the least scientific among us knows that the sun stays steadfast, that the Earth revolves around the sun.  We know that the sun "will return to us" without fail, no matter what we do or don't do.  We no longer need to petition for the return of the sun's light and the warmth that comes with it.  I think, though, that there are echoes of the old fear of the winter darkness tiptoeing around inside our psyches, despite our modern understanding of how things really work.

So these are the three primary faces of the Christmas season that I see operating these days:  the religious celebration of Christ's birth, the communal celebration of love between family and friends, and the ancient celebration of the return of sunlight.  Celebrating the return of the light is a primal celebration, usually buried deep within us and mostly unconscious.  Bright sparkling lights on our houses, evergreen trees with bright lights and ornaments decorating their boughs, and roaring fires are manifestations of this ancient winter celebration of "Christmas".  The religious celebration of the birth of Jesus is of critical importance for Christians, and its rituals have become an important part of our winter celebrations as well:  the creche, carols about angels, shepherds, wise men and a baby in a manger, services and masses celebrating the birth of the Christ child.

To me personally, though, the deepest and most important reason to celebrate Christmas is the chance to recognize and celebrate the loving bonds that bring and keep us all together.  As winter's cold descends upon us and we find ourselves together in close proximity for days and weeks on end, isn't it the perfect time to let each other know how much we care?  Isn't it the perfect time to say, "I'm choosing to spend my days with you, because you are important to me!"?

Just after Winter Solstice, it becomes obvious that the physical light of the sun is returning to the Northern Hemisphere, day by day.  What a perfect time to celebrate the deep spiritual and social light of our love and caring for each other!

Be the Change....

As I ended 2011 and now as I start 2012, the wonderful quote, "Be the change you want to see in the world," keeps rattling around inside my head.

What changes do I want to see in the world at large?  And what changes, specifically, in my world?  How can I "be" those changes?

I started to write about the big issues:  peace vs. war, looming weather crises, jobs, and so forth - but I found that, while I care deeply about such things, they are overwhelming.  I want to make my own little corner of Earth more life-affirming.  If we all did that, maybe some of the bigger problems would solve themselves.

So, in my own little corner, ...

I can start using recyclable bags regularly when I shop.  I don't know WHY I have such a hard time with this one.  It's such a simple thing.  I must have a dozen of the suckers, but I can't seem to remember to bring them inside with me when I go into a store to save myself!  I CAN do better on this one, and every bit of plastic that doesn't get used leaves our planet just a little bit healthier.

I'd love to see more real discussion among friends and neighbors and community members about what we value in life, about directions we'd like to see our lives and communities taking.  What gives us pleasure?  (The local park?  A walking path?  An internet connected coffee shop?)  Is earning more money going to make us happier?  What is a fair wage anyway?  What's the attraction of reality TV shows and who watches them and why?  How do you provide maximum personal freedom while maintaining strong community ties?  (For that matter, which of the two is more important?)  Maybe I can start a local discussion group, open to anyone who wants to join in, where we discuss topics beyond the latest football scores or "what I did on my summer vacation"?

I'd like less stuff to care for.  Short of the house burning down, that means sorting through 35+ years of possessions and winnowing them out, getting rid of what we're not using.  I can organize our things and release those that we no longer need so that other people can put them to better use.  In the old business parlance, that's a win-win!


Well, I think I'll stop.  One totally realistic goal.  One necessary goal that's harder to accomplish.  And one somewhat pie-in-the-sky goal.  Enough for this year. (I do, after all, want some chance of personal success here!)

I hope that 2012 finds us on the path to peace and understanding.  May it be a year rich in caring and love.

The Gifting Question

Now that our children are fully launched into self-reliant adulthood (and there are no grandchildren on the horizon), we've started encountering a thorny question each year as we look towards Christmas - how should we handle giving each other gifts?


Our son, Sean, is an affirmed anti-materialist and flatly doesn't want "stuff".  He is continually trying to pare down his possessions.  He lives in a (series of) smallish apartment(s) in a big city and he prefers to be able to move between them with the least amount of hassle.

Jess, our daughter, loves gift-giving and receiving, loves to create beauty around herself, and finds her home a source of great comfort.  Holidays are particularly special to her, and gift giving is an important part of the feeling of love and family at those times.

Greg's never been a big one for Christmas or Christmas gifts - his philosophy is that he likes to give gifts whenever he want to do so throughout the year, rather than at a culturally determined time of year.

And then there's me.  I love Christmas cards - both sending and receiving them.  I've moved so much throughout my life that Christmas cards are a wonderful way, at least once a year, to feel connected to friends and family that I rarely see anymore.  And I love to give multiple small gifts - the sort that can really lift the spirit if you happen to hit upon a particularly lucky choice, but that leave neither giver nor receiver feeling bad if you totally miss the mark.  The sort that can be re-gifted without angst, but hopefully will give the receiver enough pleasure and/or use that he/she wants to keep them.  Most of the time, that's the sort of gift I'd rather receive, too.

(Anyone else sense a gender issue in my discussion here?!  LOL!)

Sean has suggested, again, that we don't exchange gifts at all.  Greg would happily go along with that.  Both Jess and I would prefer to continue with the usual gift giving tradition.  I've seriously debated just having Jess and I exchange gifts with each other, but that feels very Scrooge-ish.

It seems so ironic to have a tradition that is meant to bring nothing but joy and happiness causing such annual angst...but no one has ever said that the human heart is simple!

When all's said and done, I think Ranger may have the appropriate last laugh here - as he lounges next to his favorite indoor "chewy play-toy," the electric cords!  I suspect we'll figure it all out somehow!