Christmas Day – Just Another Day?

All around the world people are gathering to celebrate Christmas day with friends and family. The so called ‘true’ meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, whom many consider their personal saviour. Of course in an increasing secular society like the UK, the religious meaning of Christmas has diminshed somewhat in importance and so for many it has become part of a cultural tradition that they still participate in.

It is associated with holidays, time off work, present giving and receiving, card sending and receiving and a time for re-connection with friends/family near and far. A time of parties, late nights, hangovers and of course over-eating and indulgence in excesses of one kind or another. Many find it a stressful time of year, especially in a recession with the extra costs that Christmas entails or when playing ‘happy families’ isn’t  always that happy in reality. 

For me, the so-called ‘true’ meaning of Christmas is not relevant for whilst I consider Jesus to have been a soulful master, he is not my personal saviour. Yes he was a Son of God, but then so is everybody else – esoterically and energetically every human being is a Son of God and has the potential to be as loving and caring and wise as Jesus.

Indeed, by putting Jesus on some unreachable pedastol just keeps people from knowing who they are in-truth and that they too could embody the love of God as He did. In other words, the idea that one needs a personal saviour is disempowering, whereas knowing whom one is in-truth, a Son of God, is empowering. We come to realise that we each have the power to truly change ourselves and our lives if we so choose and indeed that we can only save ourselves. 

Of course many people resist these understandings as it calls each of us to live with responsibility for all the choices we make or have made and that can be a big ouch!! However, resisting it, will not change it and hence why it is often only through times of struggle and suffering that we come to these deeper realisations. 

There is a saying that the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same behaviour and expecting different results. Yet, this is what we do, day after day, year after year and life after life. We live in the illusion that we are moving forward yet each day is in-truth just the same day or cycle repeating itself. We are in fact going round in circles much more than we realise!!  Thus we often stay stuck in the same engrained patterns of behaviour until some shock/struggle/suffering jolts us out of them and we perhaps come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and of life and perhaps change our way of being and behaviour.

In this way, I have come to know that the responsibility for the quality of my life and each day is down to me. Not with the Government, the politicians, the world leaders, the celebrities, my work colleagues, friends, family or any ‘other people’. It is by re-connecting to the love, stillness and joy that is innately within and bringing that to each day, that I have come to realise there is no particular special day for each day can be a special day. Whilst I endeavour to live this there are times when I fall short, be it with family members or the busyness and stress of surgery and working in the NHS can all still affect me at times, albeit much less than previously – but I know it is down to me to change my engrained ways of being for it to be otherwise. I know the quality of each day I have is down to the quality of my way of being in each day. 

 “I wish it could be Christmas every day”  are the words of a well-known song and if it refers to the feelings of joy, love and connection then in-truth it is possible for every day to be Christmas day – for Christmas day is just another day.