An added Christ­mas note! Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall is now avail­able on Kindle!

Back when I was in the min­istry, some friends ran a “Blue Christ­mas” ser­vice just ahead of Dec. 2–5. I never quite “got it,” despite all the sta­tis­tics about increases in depres­sion, etc. this time of year. The other big­gie was that many peo­ple really missed their dead fam­ily members.

I had never noticed any par­tic­u­lar bump in my client load in December–if any­thing, client load was down, so it all seemed a bit like an urban Myth. Ear­lier today, though, I was read­ing a blog post, and the author sim­ply was ask­ing, “So, how are you doing?”

He raised the famil­iar argu­ments — overindul­gence in booze, food, and spending.

And the dubi­ous joys of fam­ily gath­er­ings, where tra­di­tion can actu­ally be a dirty word. Spend­ing time with rel­a­tives you’d rather not see, reliv­ing events you either don’t remem­ber or are sure hap­pened some other way.

And, you might not even cel­e­brate Christ­mas (like Dar and me) but oblig­ate your­self to show up and be merry for the sake of, say, your mother-in-law (For­tu­nately, I adore mine. It only took me three tries to get one I liked…)

So, how are you doing?

How are your rela­tion­ships hold­ing up?

How much strain is the Sea­sonal nut­ti­ness cre­at­ing? or bet­ter put, how much are you cre­at­ing for your­self? It’s been 15 years since Dar and I pulled up—we used to spend thou­sands (yes, thou­sands…) on each other. I take respon­si­bil­ity for it.

“How about if I bang the drum with my gun?”

I’m an only child and was spoiled rot­ten. I couldn’t find a great pic­ture of Xmas glut, but the one here is me, around 4 or 5, gun in hand and drum set in the back­ground, being “prop­erly” adored by my mother. I sup­pose I would have got­ten 20 or 30 presents, and then another boat­load on Jan­u­ary 3, for my birthday.

I was well into my 40s before I could let go of what I had done with the tra­di­tion of excess. Dar hooked her­self on it too. Actu­ally, I did come up with a photo from the mid 80s. I’d painted a por­trait of Dar, and we pho­tographed it. The stuff to the left of the photo is 1/2 of the pur­chases, and it is stacked up 2 feet high.

Who’s in charge of your sea­sonal reality?

My mom, bless her soul, used to describe her­self as a “Christ­mas per­son.” She dic­tated every aspect of the hol­i­days, not only at home, but at church, where she co-opted the dec­o­ra­tions for the whole church. And it was a huge church. There were not one but two Xmas trees, each 20 feet high. Mom would go nuts dec­o­rat­ing them, as dad and I climbed 25–30 foot high lad­ders to make her dreams reality.

One of her clas­sics was the Tree of Sin and The Tree of Sal­va­tion. The first was dec­o­rated and lit in red (red apples, red tin­sel, and a big red ser­pent made out of gar­land.) The other had white lights, white bows, and, wait for it, gold sprayed chicken and turkey wish­bones. You had to see it to believe it.

I won’t get into the dubi­ous Xtian sym­bol­ism of wish­bones (although many peo­ple use “god” that way, as a celes­tial slot machine…) I will men­tion that when mom died, we were clean­ing out her closet and I found a locked file box. I picked the lock. Amongst her papers was a plas­tic bag, filled with wish­bones! She had appar­ently hoped I was going to let her loose in one of my churches, and she’d stocked up for years!

Many peo­ple run them­selves ragged try­ing to be all and do all, with com­bined and blended fam­i­lies dic­tat­ing a mad­den­ing pace, and under­ly­ing all of it is the hid­den message–which fam­ily do you like better?

We need to let go, and form our own year end, sea­sonal traditions.

There is noth­ing to be gained by enter­ing the fray, try­ing to “win” the “who spent the most?” con­test, spend­ing days and weeks try­ing to impress oth­ers. At the end of the day, we must breathe, slow down, and ask our­selves what we really want. Exclu­sive of what oth­ers want, or demand of us.

The break­ing of relationships

It is so that the famil­ial pres­sures exerted can tank rela­tion­ships. A few weeks back I men­tioned Sandy, my first girl­friend. The year I went off to Col­lege, and she was still in High School. She was also in Youth Group, and my mom and dad were the spon­sors. As you’ll remem­ber, mom dec­o­rated the Church.

I got home for Xmas, and mom and Sandy were not speak­ing. Mom had got­ten the kids to col­lect jars, glue them together, and paint them gold—they then became can­de­labra, with one or two stuck below each stained glass win­dow… and there were a lot of win­dows. Sandy decided that the can­de­labra would look bet­ter black. She was the pres­i­dent of the Youth Group, so she started repainting.

Mom insisted that I sort Sandy out, so Sandy would not “Ruin Christ­mas with black candelabra”—to, in other words, choose her over my girl­friend. At 18, that seemed rea­son­able. I went into the base­ment of the church. There Sandy sat, pissed as hell and spray­ing black paint every­where , which had set­tled, in a fine mist, all over her. I tried logic, flat­tery, annoyance—everything—and finally gave up both on win­ning and on her. I walked away.

Over spray-painted can­de­labra. And noth­ing you are on about, pissed off about, or judg­ing oth­ers about is any more impor­tant than that, let me assure you.

Unre­al­is­tic Expectations

I was watch­ing the Xmas episode of “Glee,” and “Will” made some point about recap­tur­ing the won­der of one’s first Xmas. The prob­lem with this is that you can’t. The first one you remem­ber was when you were 3 or 4, and adults were run­ning the show. It was magic back then, because stuff you wished for just showed up. And candy, cook­ies and Santa.

It truly is a time for 3-year-olds.

Magic is like Santa, and we do out­grow it. Or, bet­ter put, adult magic might just be sit­ting with a few of your near­est and dear­est, talk­ing, and shar­ing a meal. It may not be excess, run­ning to and fro, or mind­less engage­ment with peo­ple you don’t actu­ally like.

Some, times you get exactly what you ask for, and then dis­cover you didn’t want it in the first place.

So, how are you, this year?

What did you hope for, this time last year?
How much of that has come to pass?
What have you done dif­fer­ently, so as to get dif­fer­ent results?
What are you doing now that you wish you had the courage or for­ti­tude to stop doing?

What, in short, would “sim­ple, Zen liv­ing” look like, if you gave your­self half a chance?