I can't see the Christmas ease

Another attempt is over. I say attempt because I belong to a group of people who have not developed a very good relationship with Christmas due to the atmosphere in my family. In my experience, it's not a group, more like a majority, I'm guessing 9 out of 10 people. Or do you have a die-hard Christmas fanatic club around you?

As long as my dad was alive, Christmas meant uncomfortable forced sitting at home in an atmosphere where no one really had much interest in being there, but "family must be together". Of course, when I was a kid, it was nice and I loved it, but later on, it really didn't make sense. No one was acting or feeling Christmassy, we did absolutely nothing festive, but at the same time, we were homebound by something about Christmas. If I was going to be happy, I'd be somewhere else. With my mom, but somewhere else. Probably at our beloved cottage in Poland with our friends.

Then, when my dad died in November, the day before my birthday, with all the "pomp" he left around it, my mom and I were so confused that I guess we were trying to hold on to anything positive. There, I'd say, began my quest to put some magic back into Christmas, and this time more freely. But still, in a pretty conventional style of chill, food, fairytales, and some years it went better, some years it went worse. This year, however, it was kind of neutrally weird and maybe I understood why the conventional approach doesn't suit me.

What is celebrated as Christmas today was originally a pagan solstice celebration, a celebration of the beginning of the end of the year. Back then, when life was still more influenced by the cycles of nature than the calendar, the feeling of nature and energy was essential to people. Spring, rather than January, was considered the beginning of the year (it's no coincidence that taxes are collected in March), and everyone was aware that winter marks a major energetic shift. What is weak will not survive winter. We are all familiar with the phrase "I won't plant any more seeds in spring" (at least Czechs are) and I think we feel its profound power too. You might say that back in the days, when warmth, food supplies, and doctors weren't a certainty, winter was logically a sieve that not everyone could pass through. But today we live in absolute abundance and this trend is still with us anyway. The old (not just the physical) just dies in the winter.

It has to die to make room for everything new that comes not only with spring, but especially from within us. Our soul is always connected to these energetic waves, even though we don't experience them on a conscious level. This is not crazy esoteric. If you don't want to think of energy as something spiritual, just be aware of where our planet stands. It's in a different position from the sun, and that just moves with the energy fields and the length of the sunlight that controls everything on Earth.

This year I was looking forward to a Christmas break as usual. But as I was pumped up from our busy autumn, I managed to improve my creative discipline in December and ended up getting even annoyed by too much chill. But at the same time, circumstances didn't allow me to enjoy even the few days I'd booked for creative work. Now I know it was the last embrace with my blocked creative energy hiding behind the procrastination that has been by my side for a long time. My mom and I had a very bad argument over things that had been bubbling up inside of me for a long time and weren't moving anywhere. But it had to come out, things had to be amplified to bring us both closer to each other's perception, shake each other up and clean the air. Around Christmas, 2 people whose presence in my circles I've been questioning also "uninstalled" themselves from my life. And unfortunately, I also lost another friend physically.

This year's scenario wasn't anything special, actually, the year-ends all look similar. Perhaps I'm not able to create that smiling magic of a peaceful Christmas full of love and lights simply because it's at odds with what's really going on and I'm (thank God) not good at silencing my inner self.

I'll probably keep the salad and some schnitzels, if I feel like it, I'll watch a nice fairy tale, but I'll reconsider the rest. I want to focus more on the energies, listen to the changes, icebath in the sluice, hike with a flask of slivovitz, hug the falling asleep nature, read books about endings and beginnings, maybe meditate a bit, burn lots of candles and decorate the house only with what I find outside. Anyway, there is nothing for me in things like shopping, a sore back from baking candy, and a contest for the most polished photo by the tree in the perfectly styled living room. I'm just gonna be a pagan again.