15/12/2021
What Christmas means to me
Reflections from some of our Chaplains
I am a Hindu and we celebrate Diwali but also equally we celebrate Christmas, not particularly in a religious manner but culturally, as both offer messages of hope, and highlights the important facets of what it is to be alive and more so what is significant in life, namely FAMILY. Each offers an abundance of lights and colours and not forgetting food of course which helps create a happy atmosphere. I don’t know of one single family that is without its issues, however, the atmosphere created by Diwali and Christmas offers hope overcoming adversity and our hearts are more full of JOY, and we want people around us to be happy, so we make a special effort because it is for sure, a time of goodwill towards all.
Merry Christmas,
Thak
A close up of a shiny red bauble on a Christmas tree branch
Writing as an ex-Christian and a now Buddhist I have to admit to still liking Christmas hugely. This surprises my Buddhist acquaintances and friends until I advise them I use the opportunity to observe and reflect on the actions of others before and on this very special festival of Christmas Day. Christmas appears no longer a holy day in the eyes of many but has turned into another opportunity to be exploited by the corporates and to appease the children.
Perhaps we could look at ourselves more deeply and observe if we are happy at the way we conduct our Christmas celebrations having re-affirmed it as being a holy day not an opportunity to cause ourselves fiscal misery throughout the new year? There is a balance.
Returning to prayer meditation and community in celebration of Jesus may be the best Christmas present your family could receive, not the latest xbox offering.
Happy Christmas to all my Christian friends and acquaintances,
Alex Crawford
It is the time of year where I celebrate the fact that God came to live amongst us ordinary human beings.
It is the time of year that I marvel at how baby Jesus grew up to be this shining example of how to challenge oppressive regimes.
It is the time of year that I am particularly thankful that we have this example of Jesus to follow, and I am filled with eternal hope that we can and will live in more a just and loving world.
Every blessing,
Gale
I suspect (and hope) that many Buddhists look forward to Christmas as much as anyone else. Although there can sometimes be rather stereotyped or idealised images of Buddhists (especially monks) as people who live austere, silent, minimalist lives, that is not the whole story. The Buddha's own path to enlightenment brought him to the realisation that extremes of self-denial do not assist us in our spiritual progress - and nor does self-indulgence. To be spiritually aware is to try to walk a 'middle way' by which we can be more awake to the complexity of experience, and that can include finding real pleasure in good food and good company.
The events of the Christmas narrative and the ways in which it is often celebrated today have ready connections with some central elements of Buddhist practice. The nativity story is about ordinariness and obscurity: Jesus is born in an outhouse and his birth is first celebrated by some local shepherds. The Buddha's reminder that profound experience is to be found everywhere, in the most mundane or overlooked bits of everyday life, has immediate resonance with that for me. There is no need to seek grandeur or prominence; the search for such things simply gets in the way.
The pattern of giving and receiving presents is an opportunity to practice generosity and gratitude, both central to Buddhist ideals. In being generous we seek to let go of grasping on to all that we have and try to be more open and imaginative in sharing with others. Our gratitude for what we receive allows us to feel the truth and necessity of our interconnection with others, and by extension with all living things.
Those celebrations and excitements can also be reminders of those for whom Christmas is not a happy prospect because of loneliness, fear or deprivation, or because Christmas has painful personal associations. Those reminders awaken us to the Buddha's call for compassion and for generosity and concern extending far beyond our immediate family and friendship groups.
Most Buddhists celebrate the Buddha's birthday each year (with rather less agreement than Christians about the date). New life is always exciting; let us enjoy the party.
Eleanor Richards
There is a bit of a competition between Christmas and Easter as to which is the top Christian festival. Easter was first off the block. I imagine the early Christians started to celebrate it the first year after Jesus’ resurrection. It also has a definite calendar date rooted in history (that the date of Easter moves about is merely a function of the fact that it is based on a lunar and not a solar calendar). Christmas was relatively late on the scene and cannot mark the actual birthday of Jesus, as that is not known.
Today the popular vote I’m sure would be for Christmas, despite the attractions of Easter eggs, bunnies and daffodils. That is partly because the festival has attracted to it several other dimensions: light at the turn of the year, the family and its reunions, and feasting and present giving. Christmas ‘carols’ can be as much about reindeer as Jesus, so that very many people can feel they can join in, whatever their religious beliefs. It is a joyous celebration.
If Easter feels jealous of being upstaged by Christmas, it is not just down to the commercialisation of Christmas and the financial investment in the festivities which that brings. Arguably, Christmas marks a greater miracle. Easter celebrates the victory of Christ on the cross and miracle of his resurrection as the defeat of death and the offer of eternal life to all. This is the supreme work of Christ, bringing salvation and the forgiveness of sin. But this required the prior incarnation of God in Jesus. If you are familiar with the way the Creed is recited in a Catholic church, you may know that it is customary to genuflect (partly kneel) at the place where the birth of Jesus is described. This is an acknowledgement of its centrality in the story of our salvation.
And if believing in the resurrection of a dead person is challenging to us who live in such a materialist world, how much more is the belief that God became man! This throws into chaos all our preconceived ideas about both God and humans.
God is as he is in Jesus: not a remote, disengaged being, perhaps operating some levers on earth from afar, but someone who shared our worries about getting constipated. Someone prepared to get down and dirty at our level. Someone buffeted by all the woes of human life, dodgy friends, implacable enemies, workload stress (though he did set a good example in taking time out to root down); and its joys, meals with friends, sunsets and sunrises, a good glass of wine. He was also someone who shared life with social outcasts, who tended the sick, who told riddling stories, who was ready to forgive and to love. Someone prepared to risk all and to lay down his life for his friends (all of us).
And humans are as they are in Jesus: not grovelling, weak and pitiful, at the mercy of every social change, but someone who demonstrated the outstanding capacity of humans. Someone resolutely ethical, with the determination to see things through, with the necessary courage to stand up to political pressures and to handle death by torture. But someone also who was loyal to his friends, even when they hardly deserved it; someone moved by compassion at the suffering around him. A person through whom the spirit of God shone and communicated herself to others. This is the amazing capacity of the human, and to share the stature of Christ is within our reach. We can believe in the best of ourselves and others and grow into that greatness. And our destiny is to share in the life of God as adopted daughters and sons.
That, however inadequately put, is what, to my mind, justifies all the partying of Christmas. Have a great time!
Nigel Cooper
