Journey to Enlightenment Part 01

Author(s): Chitrabhanu, Chetana Catherine Florida, Nirmala Hanke, Raksha Penni Helsene
Publisher: Create Space

Page 61

Winter 2003: Celebrating Holidays. All Days
Dear Lighthouse members, families and friends,
May you be blessed with a peaceful mind, a loving heart and the knowledge that you do make a difference by just being you in Divine Order.
It's time to celebrate the Holidays again. Celebrations need to be expressed all the days we live and not just a few. Some people I have known don't enjoy the Holidays and don't enjoy celebrating any other days either. However, there are others who started to celebrate the Holidays, continue to do so, and now that celebration energy has moved into their daily lives. They are learning how to celebrate life every day, not just on the Holidays. It's a growth process for us to go through in order to spiritually grow up.
When I think about celebrating the Holidays, I begin to reminisce, about how we celebrated Christmas when I was growing up. I remember the special rituals we went through every year. My grandmother, who lived with my mother and me, would take a long time making potato and cheese pirogies. We would decorate the tree and go Christmas shopping. Every year I would always get my grandmother a pair of blue felt slippers from Sam's in downtown Detroit. Every year she would act surprised and pleased to get the slippers, and she would wear them until the next Christmas, when again she'd receive another pair of blue felt slippers.
We also had one other ritual of going downtown to Hudson's and riding up 13 floors on the escalator to that magical place, Santa Land, with toys, rides, cotton candy, and seeing Santa. Even after I knew certain “new” truths, we still continued our yearly ritual. My mother would start telling me that Santa wouldn't be bringing too much because he has so many children to take care of. I was always amazed that "he" got me more than a couple of presents—even socks and other articles of clothing were given to me from him!
All of these Holiday rituals were what made Christmas so special to me growing up. It is through such rituals that we all celebrate our particular holidays—whether Christmas, or Hanukah, Kwanzaa or Ramadan. Rituals give meaning to our lives and unite us through time; past, present and future. Doing the same things each year bonds families and communities together, and gives us a way to celebrate in good times and through bad times.
In our Lighthouse community we are very fortunate to have developed our own rituals for the Holidays. We begin with Thanksgiving Eve Meditation, giving thanks for all of our blessings. We celebrate Hanukah each year, and for Christmas we celebrate with the Children's Christmas Play and Party, and Christmas Eve Meditation. We have our annual Holiday message Party, and our New Year's Eve Meditation, through which we release all the negative vibrations from the current year and invite in the highest vibrations possible for the New Year, for ourselves and others.
62 - Journey to Enlightenment