My take on Christmas (2005)

So…what does Christmas mean to me, a Taoist who stopped labeling herself as a Christian more than a decade ago? To be honest, it’s a question that’s been puzzling me ever since. The Christmas I spent as an atheist was…quite miserable, not to mention confusing. Part of me reacted to the symbology around me while part of me felt disgust, and all of me felt isolated and alienated. However, it was just as confusing after realizing that I believed in something beyond myself, but wasn’t willing to identify that something as the Christian God.

For convenience, I buried myself in pagan symbolism for a while. And, honestly, I still find that more appealing than most Christian symbology. But the pagan rituals and ceremonies… *sighs* I’m just not a ritualistic person, really. And the pagan gods… I see them as constructs of the mind that exist in direct relation to the amount of belief in them. They are useful archetypes and can result in beautiful stories, but they are not the power in the universe. Human awareness and consciousness are more powerful than the ancient gods. And to newly aware humans, the Solstice must have been a powerful symbol: as the nights grew longer and longer, it must have seemed that they might continue getting longer until there was no more day… then came the Solstice, trapping the Sun for three days, and the nights began getting shorter and shorter… And so light had won against darkness for another year, until Midsummer when the darkness would start to gain again.

So I guess I see Christmas as honoring one portion of the neverending cycle of yin and yang. As soon as yin reaches its strongest point, it begins turning to yang, and in that moment of change, there is an instant of pure yang energy. In fact, this happens in every moment, in every breath, in every sunrise…yet it seems appropriate to recognize the yearly progression. We shouldn’t forget the other piece of the cycle, at Midsummer, when yang reaches its strongest point and begins turning to yin. It’s strange, but the Christ-story would fit better at Midsummer than at Winter Solstice. Why? Because the God of the Old Testament is pure and complete yang. No yin at all. Christ had to come to balance that out, to put the yin back into God. To bring balance. Hmmm… by that reckoning, Christ’s coming made God whole. I find that fitting, though I’m sure that thought gives most Christians the screaming heebie-jeebies.

Note: This is where my thoughts on Christmas took me this year. I'd be surprised if they haven't changed some by next Christmas.