DAY 365+133

after Christmas

I love this time of the year, I love feeling generous and willing to be at ease regardless of past fears and sadness and anger. I experience it as a sort of rebirth every single year (!), maybe because I celebrate my birthday the Christmas Eve, but it is not a facile time to me. It makes me feel easily overwhelmed with expectations about how things could be (yes, I know...).

Latest years I´ve been cultivating a sort of detachment and trying to let go my idea of what a Christmas celebration should be. Not because I think that usual Christmas celebration is not desirable, or beautiful, but because it really doesn´t fit my life circumstances and makes me suffer. According to this I´ve been abandoning complicated preparations, sophisticated meals, crowded meetings, extended family meals, Christmas cards and greeting, expensive presents and shopping.

I am learning to live it as a personal mood that I can experience -and enjoy- inside me, or along with those who share my new perspective. At this moment of my life I am choosing to express what Christmas means to me in a more discreet and unadorned way. Christmas has always been to me a time where I can make a difference, where I can explore consciously the divinity who lives also inside me, what makes me to feel at peace with myself and others, a time to celebrate light, but I have always wanted to stuff my feelings  into the traditional celebration and it hasn´t  worked fairly well. After much pain I accepted that alternative habits could work better but it has taken me time to accept, change and re-create my Christmas.

I am still on the way but this Christmas I have experienced much more peace and happiness than before and this is an excellent indicator. As this is a work in progress, I have not a complete set of instructions, but I would like to share some of the things that are helping me:

Breaking some rules (or most of them)

Cultivating frugality (but not avarice)

Dismissing insane customs (even when they are old and dear to me or my family)

Buying only things that can be useful or are beautiful (or are really surprising)

Practicing mindfulness

Being generous not only with money but with time and love

Keeping a joyful mood

Letting go drama and perfectionism

Looking for wonder (and living it)

Being true to myself and to the way I conceive Christmas

Doing things that I wouldn´t usually do just because the moment demands it (I am not talking about sacrifice, I am talking about being less rigid, more spontaneous)

Giving new meaning to old habits (and keep only what can be meaningful)

Creating new traditions (that can be interwoven with the old one) and new memories

I know this will help me throughout the years ahead to create a kind of celebration that will make my heart and my soul feel pleased, I am so happy to have started this new path!...

Blessing to you all. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas.