Hannah gazing on the first snow. Foto: AF 2019
Upon having a child, every thing becomes first again. The first walk outside, the first breeze on her skin, the first tooth, and now the first Christmas. While we have experienced countless seasons before, here now is a soul given to us, which is new to this world, a blank slate, open and vulnerable to what we offer it. Our baby child, like every baby child, encounters the world around her with a mix of curiosity and wonder, sometimes quietly gazing, sometimes trying to get a taste of it. Every day holds new discoveries as well as familiar repetitions, like the lullaby dance she does with her father every night since her very first day.
Being constantly watched and imitated by our baby child brings a new awareness to us; we find ourselves wanting, like her, to chew and taste the things we surround ourselves with in order to decide what is worth keeping: what kind of tradition do we want to give to our child, what stories do we want to tell her, what kind of spiritual life do we want to live with her?
Adults have created a whole tool box of tricks to create a sense of childlike wonder around Christmas. Christmas music which starts to play in November, the candles and the greens, snowflakes and glitter, all meant to cheer us up and bring about some “Christmas feeling.” At Christmas Eve we even slow down for a brief moment, turn off the lights, and sing Silent Night…
But latest at the third day of Christmas, when many take the decorations down and the radio stops playing Christmas music, most of us must go back to work, and some disillusionment sets in with the long winter. All those carefully curated moments did not quite do what they were supposed to do. Some feel stuffed from festive food, for some the family peace blew up amid too high expectations. It feels like the Christ child in the manger got buried under the empty gift boxes and hasn’t been seen since…
May be there is something wrong with the idea of Christmas cheer in the first place? May be Christmas isn’t a warm, fuzzy feeling we can curate, but rather a birthing experience we must give into?
“May be Christmas isn’t a warm, fuzzy feeling we can curate, but rather a birthing experience we must give into?”
How then do we get to a sense of wonder and awe? Perhaps by going back to first things, to seeing things for the first time. Unfortunately it seems, our hearts have many layers of deep memories – we cannot see and feel without these. But we can practice what the Buddhists call beginner’s mind (shoshin). This is a posture of openness, even eagerness when we contemplate something. It is as simple as paying attention. Look, really look, at the manger scene, the straw, the animals and people. Set side, bracket out, your learned theology, family traditions, even your expectations of what the awe of beginner’s mind should feel like. Become the empty slate into which God can write (Meister Eckhart).
Seeing through the eyes of a child does not mean to become childish, nor does it require the disposal of our culture and traditions all together. As adults, we can only enter a space of such childlike encounter if we become fully aware of all that we bring, so we can then let it go for a while, bracket it out for the moment, look at the phenomenon itself, as the philosopher Edmund Husserl describes.
Become like a child. See through the eyes of a child. Eager, open, without expectation. Only Look. Only Now.
PracticeFind a piece of decoration, or a lived tradition (like making cookies, or going to the midnight service), something related to Christmas which matters to you. Look at it like you are seeing it for the first time. See, even taste it, from all sides and angles. Wonder what it is and which story it tells. How would you show it to a baby child?
