My Christmas

The only religious festival that buoyed up my spirit when I was a boy was Christmas.  The Holy Week with Good Friday dominating it was the antithesis of Christmas.  Easter didn’t really mean anything much to me except interruption of good sleep to attend the predawn church service.  Christmas too fractured the sleep with its midnight church rituals.  But that was fun too with the crib, the stars, the Christmas tree and the Santa. 

We would spend the entire Christmas Eve preparing the crib at home.  The festive mood that pervaded the entire atmosphere not only at home but also in the village was ebullient. 

My Christmas Tree

There was more to Christmas than all that ebullience, however.  There was romance in it: a feeling of mystery, excitement and otherworldliness.  The myth of Joseph travelling with pregnant Mary braving the winter’s chill through the wilderness of Bethlehem, their helpless search for a place to stay, Jesus’ birth in a cave in the company of cattle, the first carol sung by angels, the shepherds who responded to the heavenly music and the Magi from the east were all copious fodder for a child’s wild imagination.  

Even today, when I have learnt a lot more about Jesus than those childish myths and fables, Christmas has not lost its charm for me – not entirely, at least.  I love the stars and the illumination.  I love the light that accompanies Christmas. 

It doesn’t really matter whether Jesus was born on 25 Dec or some other day.  In all probability, history will never be able to tell us that precise date.  It doesn’t matter whether the angels sang the carol of peace and joy.  But the peace and joy matter much.  Christmas is essentially about peace and joy.  I would like to believe so, at least.

Was Jesus a joyful person?  I don’t think so.  In the novel I’m writing (facing writer’s block currently), Jesus appears as a man who was disillusioned with mankind, as one who embraces the cross in profound helplessness.  Whatever I have read about Jesus has not led me to make even the faintest of assumptions that Jesus ever smiled.  Jesus must have been acutely conscious of the profound absurdity of human existence.  He couldn’t have preached the Sermon on the Mount otherwise, especially what he said about the righteous: that they are sure to be persecuted but they will discover their heaven.  [I have my personal interpretations of Jesus’ teachings.]

No spiritual mystic can be a joyful being, I think.  William James (philosopher-psychologist) argued that insanity can hail from the same psychological source as genuine mysticism.  Melancholy is concomitant with that insanity.  Deepest spiritual truths often emerge from melancholy and some insanity.  Joyfulness is quite a different matter. 

Christmas is joyful.  I love that joyfulness.  I love smiles.  I love stars.  Let me extend joyful Christmas greetings to you whatever Christmas may mean to you.