The anticipation, preparation and quiet waiting of Advent, and the stillness of the winter solstice is over. We have journeyed towards the birth of the Child of Light and Love. We have prepared our own inner mangers to receive this Light and Love. And the time has come for the birth of the Child of Love and Light within each of us.
Whether we celebrate Christmas or Hannukah or the Solstice or Kwanza, 0r something else, this time of year gives us time to pause, if we can find our own inner place, during these long nights of the year. This is Mother Nature’s gift to us all, long nights, dark days, ice, snow and cold, it forces us to draw in and slow down and reflect.
Children love Christmas, for they love birthdays and know something is special about this one. For some of us this birthday is about the birth of the Son and for others that is the birth of the Sun.
The birth has happened and we are in the tender new days of the newborn.
This week between Christmas and New Years Eve often feels like a time out of time, a magical tome, a time of slowing down, reflecting on the year passed. I’s a time of visiting and being together with loved ones in my family.
From my childhood, I have memories of going visiting, to grandparents, aunts and uncles houses, full of cousins over this week between Christmas Eve and New Years Day. We’d go around, stopping in for a visit, one always fortified with drinks and good food to eat, special Christmas treats and plenty of good cheer ad they would come to us to, informal drop ins, open house, Christmas parties and dinners. It was always a social time and a quiet one.
For the children this was a time to play and sometimes, to cut up. I got up to some pretty good adventuress with my cousins ver the years, often beginning on Christmas even when our parents left us home under the watch of an older sibling while they were at midnight mass.
Either way it offers us a time to stand back, take stock and act on this opportunity to rekindle hope within, to carry our own flames of light and warmth and love into the world.
One of my favorite activities of the year is The Inner Christmas reflections that Lynn Jericho brings us each year.
To receive the daily messages as well as the beautiful guide to Inner Christmas, sign up on her webpage here:
http://imagineself.com/inner-christmas/
If you have not yet heard my Interview with Christine Schreier on The Role of the Doll in the Life of the Child, you will find it here.
Merry Christmas and Sunny Solstice wishes to you all,
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