A Merry Christmas 2018, to everyone reading this. BUT — What does it mean??

[thepainterdoug]

Christmas, as all holidays is a moment for everyone to step off the production wheel and spend time with family friends and reflect on their life. If we didn't have holidays the machine would have us never stop to do so.

I really don't care what anyone makes of any holiday, because the origins of all holidays are by now distorted and commodified .
so kick back and reassess where we go from here.

thanks bill for all!

[Valerie Villars]

I used to love Christmas. It was great when I had a young child.

Now that I see the world as it really is, it just seems like a big distraction with the added bonus of getting us all in debt and/or spending money we don't really have. It's a twofer for those who benefit; the global controllers.

I don't mean to sound cynical, but I guess I am. About a lot more than I used to be.

[Agape]

Peace, of all things the most , if there’s anything to Christmas it was the time when people on this Planet stopped for a while and stopped fighting.
That’s what would make the time sacred, the peace and silence of the Night ,especially.
Of course in later years and the time preceding Christmas seemed to turn to everything else than “peace”, even my own parent turned repeatedly “furious” for couple of weeks before Xmas rather than “peaceful” because all the cleaning that had to be done and getting things that would be allegedly missing( I did not miss them)
and utter madness in the stores and recently, markets flooded with Xmas goods since the end of October.

Forget it Let them eat and eat and eat and buy the stores out and wear Santa’s Hats and whatever they wish, let them all they wish ..
if they can also ..stop fighting ..

Perhaps this year they will, if not then next year.

They’ve trained it for two thousand years so some year they’ll succeed ...in not doing anything special perhaps just lighting a candle ( instead those expensive electric lanterns) under some tree( instead cutting it down) and watch their Star,
to rise ..and set ..

connected to the soul and the Universe


To all those pure souls , Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

[Franny]

Christmas can be whatever you make it; consumer nightmare or a time to relax with family and friends and enjoy a traditional folk holiday with all the trimmings of choice. I like it and when circumstances allow, that's what I enjoy doing.

[Jake]

Hello, all... I hope everyone is being kind, and being treated kindly, as well. In a nutshell,,, That's It! Of course, I wish that for folks everyday... This Christmas I cried a bit,, when I found out about Sir Robert O'dean. I wonder what that means... I'm having a double Jack Danials, and my Christmas toast will be for Bob. Kerry said it was okay... I miss you guys...

Cheers, Bob...
Jake...

[crosby]

My most favorite experience with Christmas today is that all of my children come home to see me and I get to spend many hours with them. I am not afraid to say that I pull out the decorations and we make a wonderful dinner to celebrate our family and the nostalgia that this day brings for the past.

In the past, when I was young, my stepsister and I really did try to wait up all night to see that jolly old elf deliver the goods that we dreamed about. We would watch out our bedroom window, very quietly, for that sleigh that would fly through the sky with magic. It was our favorite time of the year.

When I listen to the old classic standard Christmas songs, I am reminded of the dreams of youth, and the feelings of happiness. Nostalgia can be a wonderful thing, and my family and I enjoy those thoughts of old. We may have been sleeping and not aware of what truths were out there, but Oh what a wonderful dream it was.

Warmest wishes to all,
crosby

[Words of Joy]

Christmas period this year was not what I had imagined up front. With our Dutch church community group we made plans to come together, celebrate the birth of Jesus, eat, give gifts, sing songs and have a good time. I was also preparing singing for the Latin church's Christmas celebration. In the period before Christmas I was isolated for two weeks, to do some reflection and talking to God to seek His guidance in my desire to change some of my undesired behavior. During this period I also started preparing for the singing. Usually when I prepare for singing in front of the congregation, I ask Gods guidance for selection of songs. I then search and Holy Spirit signals me when I find a song that is good to sing. Though when I did this for Christmas songs, there was no response from the Holy Spirit during searching through numerous long playlists on Youtube. After a long search I started wondering why it was taking so long. Certainly there must be a number that would be appreciated from all those Christmas songs, I thought. I started questioning whether maybe there would be something unpleasing to God about Christmas. So I started digging: reading some articles, watching a couple of videos. While doing so I felt the Holy Spirit on a couple of details. In short, I learned God is not a fan of Christmas, because of the pagan roots (Saturnalia) of Christmas. And He showed me some verses where He says Gods holy days should not mix with non-godly holy days. There's more that can be said, though I'll leave it at this. I discussed this with my wife and, as we put God first, canceled all festivities for this period. Yesterday we painted our bedroom and today we'll start to place new laminate there and place new curtains.

Some articles I read:
https://www.simpletoremember.com/vit...eRealStory.htm
https://thetruthandlight.wordpress.c...-of-christmas/

[Innocent Warrior]

Merry Christmas!

Hi, Bill. My son loves Christmas, so for us it’s about traditions, having fun together and indulging. I might have grown out of it by now or been too slack if it weren’t for him but I’ve always loved Christmas. Mostly for the traditions, I have fond memories of when my extended family would all get together when I was a child.

[Bob]

Spontaneous Joy

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

No window dressing needed...

[Mike Gorman]

I was raised as a Catholic, and I was also a believer in 'Father Christmas' until I was about 7, no doubt many of us had a similar experience. In my adult years I accept that Christmas is a long, established custom, pagan before it was Christian, it has become an overtly commercial occasion, but it has very positive elements also. I accept, and tolerate Christmas, and focus on the opportunity to connect with others. That's about it for me

[Hym]

Turning on the t.v. on Christmas Eve I saw the services in Rome, at the Vatican. My thought was "What the f*** does that have to do with Jesus ?" The excessive material display of worldly wealth has to be the direct opposite of the sacrifice and the love that the life of Yesuah embodied.

I too was raised in an overly large catholic family and attended a catholic school for part of my youth. That same religion had priests that molested some of my older brothers, each then living their lives with very different but thoroughly disheartening and soul diverting consequences. I'm appreciative that the institutional dialogue about me was aware enough to know that if I would have been treated that way, any abuser would have died at my hands. That surely is the most Christian I could have been with them.

As it turns out I spent Christmas consoling a friend who has always had a hard time dealing with all of the superficiality, commercialism and hypocrisy of the day, mainly because of his real life, inspiring and positive, loving and loved experiences as a Christian. We didn't talk about diverting our energies or ignoring the world around us. We did share the celebration of how living in the challenge of being real with our brothers, our sisters and ourselves is the reminder of what a day like Christmas should be.

If I could speak here as my friends and I speak it would not be appropriate, but you get the idea. Our different experiences had a simple shared insight into the heart of the real meaning of the life of one extraordinary man, what that life meant and means now, and sure as hell what it hasn't meant in these past 2,000 years.

My son had a very good day in Toronto on Christmas, having been invited to a Sikh Temple by those who could tell by his name and his wrist bracelets that he was raised by a sikh who experienced the personal power of insight thru responsibility, not by the fakirs in white. He talked about the kindness and open honesty he experienced in their sadhana, quite unlike the dogmatic, pseudo-yogic, mindless idolatry he had experienced from american sikhs in the states. I then told him of how loving it had been over the years to meet the very same, down to earth and deeply inspired sikhs who greeted me in my travels.

Because he was supposed to be greeted by a friend who didn't meet him there, and knowing that possibility beforehand, he had planned alternative travels while in the area, much to his benefit in the end. He also very much liked the great diversity of cultural acceptance he experienced in the city, noting all of the ethnic Chinese, the Indians-Sikhs and Hindus alike, the Muslim men and women, other Asians, etc. His experience exemplified what Christmas should be.

As I am usually alone during this time I find Christmas, my birthday the next day and my youngest brother's birthday the day after that...all a very healthy time of relaxed insight.

Coming from seeing the excessive diversion of the attention of everyone from the true example of what one great soul lived, sacrificed and left for I must say that using the term Christ mass is the biggest diversion of all. The example of Christ, whether real or concocted, has no value if it is not a very personal and enjoyable, a direct sense of relation to the challenge of doing what the heart knows is right. It is not a "mas(s)" thing. It is always personal or it has no relation, no vibrant living connection to Creation.