Our Hybrid Holidays

It's snowing here today, we've had Christmas songs by Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin and Sinatra on heavy rotation, and the tree's up, hung with ornaments that bring back so many memories--the striped stocking a childhood friend gave me 33 years ago (!); the craft foam dove and the jingle bells cut from old egg cartons from our next-door neighbors; the paper gingerbread men Bridger made at ECFE when he was three; the finger-knit garlands I learned to make last year after many, many failed tries. A good Christmas tree tells all kinds of stories, about where you've been, the people you've known, and how you've changed.

We practice a rather spotty, hit-and-miss Buddhist-Christian-pagan fusion spirituality around here, so putting up the Christmas tree coincides with the week-long celebration of Rohatsu, Buddha's enlightenment. Inspired by Katharine Krueger, the dynamically wonderful director of children's practice at our Zen center, we made a little scene of Buddha meditating under the bodhi tree at our house, with a clay Buddha sitting on a Lego meditation cushion, attended by Lego figures standing in for Svasti and Sujata, children who helped the Buddha while he sat under the bodhi tree by bringing him milk porridge to eat and grass for a soft place to sit.



Every day this week, the kids and I brought milk to the little Buddha figure, as the girl Sujata is said to have done (except for the morning or two we forgot--sorry, hungry little Buddha!). We talked about how people here in St. Paul and all around the world were sitting weeklong silent meditation retreats in Buddha's honor. One day we enacted the legend of the demonic Mara trying to sway the Buddha from his concentration. Cassidy draped herself in silk scarves and danced in front of the Buddha to try to distract him with her beauty, like the dancing girls Mara conjured up. Bridger built Lego cannons and fired them at the Buddha. And I pulled out the most powerful weapon of all--shame. "You think you can understand the truth? What an arrogant fool you are! You might as well give up! You'll never succeed!" But Buddha kept sitting.

Today, December 8, is traditionally celebrated as the day the Buddha became enlightened. He touched the earth with one hand and declared that together with all beings, he had found the truth and was free. That's the part I love--all of us are included.

The legend is that the Buddha's first "sermon" was to the children who had helped him and their friends, and what he taught was how to eat a tangerine mindfully. You can find a nice version of the story here. After telling a much-abbreviated version of this story, the kids and I got out a Satsuma mandarin, peeled it, divided it up, and ate our slices together in silence, an activity they've already been introduced to at the Zen center. We tried to pay attention to the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the look and feel of the mandarin. We noticed that we were much more aware of the weight and shape of the fruit on our tongue than we normally are. Usually we immediately bite the fruit, chew it up, and swallow before we've really even tasted what's in our mouths (a metaphor for how I often live my life, I have to say). Bridger, who isn't usually a fan of oranges, said he actually liked the orange when he ate it that way.

I am trying, this holiday season, to remember to slow down, do less, buy less, and find opportunities to express love in small but meaningful ways. To take time to show Cassidy how to use a big embroidery needle to sew together felt squares for a fabric wreath instead of trolling for one more gift we don't need online. To bake my traditional "so-you've-had-a-baby" veggie lasagne for a neighbor who's just had her third child. To stop myself before I give the kids "a horrible lecture" when I'm displeased with them, as Bridger put it yesterday, and find a way to communicate with more kindness and less criticism.

My father died when I was twelve, and for many years after his death, Christmas was a really hard time of year for me and my mom and sister. It didn't help that my birthday falls on December 12, so close to Christmas and finals week in school that I often felt deprived and gypped.

It's actually only in the last few years, spurred by my kids, that I'm finding joy and abundance in this time of year. I'm coming around to the idea that lighting candles and stringing up Christmas lights at this dark time is one of the oldest and most beautiful of human gestures.

Lately the kids have been asking for more stories about my father. I tell them about how he used to answer the door like Lurch on the Addams Family, intoning "You rang?" I tell them about how he once dreamed a burglar was climbing in his bedroom window and knocked himself out cold against the wall charging the intruder in his mind. I tell them about how he liked to click his heels in parking lots, how he cried when we had to give away our crazy cocker spaniel Honey when I was four.

"It's too bad your father never knew about Bridger and me," Cassidy said to me this morning.

I agreed. But maybe, I told her, he did know about them. After all, it's a big mystery what happens to us after we die. No one really knows for sure.

"Maybe God whispered about us in your dad's ear, and he saw an angel who looked like me," Cassidy said.

It's moments like this that make me so grateful, I could just about levitate.