Christmas reflections

I have spent my first Christmas ever, in 66 years, away from my family, in Chiang Mai, and I can now reflect on what I find truly meaningful about Christmas and what it was that I missed about being in solitude. For sure, it is not the presents or the Christmas cards which are important. I find it a chore to hunt endlessly around for unsuitable presents and to write soundbites on dozens of Christmas cards because that is what convention tells you to do. I prefer to give gifts and send cards spontaneously, not just because it's Christmas. Neither does being away from England in any way sadden me; with its dark days, cold winter weather and its cynicism it is a relief not to be there and to be instead in the warmth and smiles and sunshine of Thailand. I expect that Christmas in the wintry mountains of Europe would be a different story, too, as there is a mystical magic about Christmas in the mountains, a magic of a pagan sort where the Christmas story hangs on the tree of an older tradition. But in Thailand, as now in England, there is no true sense of the Christmas story. Just jingle bells and endless consumerism. So, I havn't missed the story of Christmas, nor its magic, as there was none of that in England either, at least not since 1995 when I last attended Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral which purveyed the true spirit of the message: an enlightened being, the Cosmic Christ, a baby born in poverty, who would show us the way to universal consciousness and to the divine within us that we might open our hearts to unconditional love and compassion. For that surely is the message of Christmas. And when I was going to the Cathedral, the deeply spiritual Cardinal Hume was proclaiming the message which made it meaningful. I doubt the present Cardinal is capable of doing that.

I feel that the best way to honour the true message is by spending Christmas in the company of our loved ones, particularly our family. That is what I have missed, my loved ones, because I have not had the company of any single one of them this Christmas. My beloved mother died in March and I spent 65 Christmases with her, latterly travelling back from Thailand just to do that (oh dear, my carbon footprint!). My cousins would also join us which made the day special and then my brother would leave his family and visit two days' later. But life is change and now the format has to be altered before next year as this year is a non-event, a sort of unplanned floating Christmas where there was no more than a visit to the Christmas mass although that was not as magical as the Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral in London which always set the stable aglow with the true meaning of Christ's birth. My only loved one in Thailand is a very dedicated nurse who has to work in the hospital many kilometres away. So, all my loved ones are far away, at least at the physical level. But at a deeper soul level maybe I can commune with them and sense their presence, both those living and those who have passed over. This, for me, will be the true meaning of Christmas 2007. Happy Christmas.