Christmas joy…Christmas sorrow. I was sharing with my son, in one of our late-evening discussions, how I can’t help but feel a sorrowfulness at Christmas. It is once a year, a marker, a pivot-point, and a time of reflection. And then it is gone. Similar to Dickens' ‘A Christmas Carol’, we too are visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.
And so, as I laid in bed on Christmas Eve reading a musty-smelling, old copy of this story, the sorrow I felt made sense. We long for Christmas past…the memories flood us. Time has passed. People have passed. And we are left within a nostalgic mist.
Therefore, so much of Christmas Present is built with high expectations, particularly if we are stuck in that nostalgic mist. The hype. The anxiety of shopping. The gatherings. The wrapping of gifts. The opening of gifts. And then it is gone. Little of the ‘moment’ is felt and the present quickly slips away, another year gone to be lamented next year.
But perhaps, it is the ghost of Christmas Future that is most unsettling. We understand the pattern of change, and it is frightening. We know moments are fleeting and when we wake on the 26th of December, it is often with a sorrow. And maybe that is why the holidays are difficult. Masking high emotions with food, drink, and gifts leave us empty.
It is in this place that we long for a comforting constant. This Christmas, my now high-school children and I studied the Catholic friar-mystic-philosopher-theologian, Meister Eckhart. And it is in his abstract interpretation of the Nativity that there is joy. To empty oneself of it all, and allow for God’s Son to be born, in eternity, and within us, in the shared ‘grunt’, translated as ‘ground’ of God, or origin of our soul, is profound. We prepare before Christmas for this rebirth within us, and throughout the year. This is the constant that cannot change. The light that transcends past, present and future.
And so, the Scandinavian tradition of lighting candles in the graveyards at Christmas comes to mind. To give light and honor our loved-ones who have passed, brings the past to the present. And it gives light to the future. When we focus on letting God’s light in our souls, we know life is not fleeting. It is beautiful. So today, and within the next 12 days of Christmas, I will practice dwelling in this light.
“Where is He who is born King of the Jews?” Now observe, as regards this birth, where it takes place. “Where is He who is born?” Now I say as I have often said before, that this eternal birth occurs in the soul precisely as it does in eternity, no more and no less, for it is one birth, and this birth occurs in the essence and ground of the soul.”
-Maurice O’C Walshe in the volume of “The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart”
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