Christmas, for me, can't really properly be called a high "day". It's a season, one that spans from around December 15-Jan 3. The dates are variable - it begins when the Christmas Spirit hits me, and it ends a couple of days before I manage to make myself finally take down the Christmas tree. There are a number of rituals that occur within this season - some with family, some by myself, and some that vary from year to year. So it's somewhat difficult to describe my celebration within a single essay. It might help to read my essay, My Pagan Christmas.
To me, Christmas means ... well, pretty much what everyone agrees that it means. It's a time of light, of joy and love, of togetherness with family. My traditions are ones celebrating kinship - with my family and with my closest friends. As such, this year I recognized these traditions as sacred rituals; rituals that, in their own way, use the same ritual language that we use in our clan rituals and celebrate the same Mystery that we celebrate within our clan. Although most of the celebration had no candles, no incense, nor vocal calls to my Gods, They were there. They were, for I celebrated kinship with all creatures this past season.
My Christmas season has always been a celebration during the darkest nights of the year, an orgy of gifts and food as a celebration of the past year's abundance, and a season that has so many elements of Pagan, Christian, and secular traditions wound together in a complex web, that I frankly don't try to separate all them into their respective originating traditions. This Christmas, my sharing of these web of traditions with my family and many others, known and unknown, has left me feeling more connected, more grounded, and more in touch with the Divine than ever before.
My rituals? Too many to count. I usually visit a little island in Florida where my parents have a house. My great-grandmother moved there years ago, and along the female line, the family has been visiting or moving there ever since. My grandmother moved there when she retired, after bringing her husband and family there faithfully for many Christmases; when she later moved into a retirement community, my parents got the house. It's a tradition - the daughter, and her husband, always show up there for Christmas. I barely made it there this year - only for a few days, on account of my tiny amount of vacation ... but my husband and I made it. As we left the island after our short stay, I did as I have done since I was a small girl, and as my mother has before me - put a small pinch of sand in my shoes. Family lore says doing so will assure a safe return to that magical place.
I sing Christmas carols because that's the music that tells me it's Christmas. I always endeavor not to look too amused as I notice my parents wrapping up their presents on Christmas eve - all those presents wrapped and put into bows, just so we can all rip them off in the morning. My ritual is the opposite; I try to wrap them all at least a couple of days ahead so that they can be out for the family ritual of shaking, squeezing, and sniffing packages. We open presents promptly on the morning of December 25 (and look inside our stockings), and always before breakfast - which, incidentally, is often something special.
Like many, Christmas in our family revolves around food. I have always had a big Christmas feast with my family, where we all eat too much and my parents ask how many times they need to "run around the block" or how many of the next weeks' meals the need to skip in order to avoid gaining too much weight. In between Christmas and New Years, we recoup from the Christmas rush and, if a lavish dinner was eaten in, eat leftovers until we're all sick of them. New Year's eve always has my father's famous banana daiquiris - which he reproduced from my mother's memories of what her father's secret recipe was. This year was the first year I carried on the tradition in my own home - making them for my guests, as I wasn't with my family that day. It felt like a rite of passage, somehow.
There are countless more rituals - all sacred, all commonplace. This year, as the first Christmas as a Pagan, and in my own home (we celebrated once in Florida, and Christmas morning, after we flew home, had another private celebration), had some new traditions. This year included a reading of the Christmas story from Luke - a tradition that my husband brought from his family and his religious tradition. For me, my religion demanded that I recognize the value of these continuing traditions I already had - to recognize our family traditions as sacred and valuable. I recognized that this yearly trip through this season has always been, and will remain, a way of marking time in my life. Between Christmas and New Years, I did a standard TdB ritual, formally recognized the dark of winter and shared communion with the Kindreds. In some ways, though, it was superfluous - I already had so many memorable rituals already - all of them already working to connect me with the Divine that I hardly needed a specific ritual to do so. I only needed to open my eyes to what I was already doing.