Christmas - Now with Canadian Content

The holiday itself is fast approaching.  As a foot soldier (doughboy?) in the War on Christmas, I will be removing Christ completely and spending the day up at the Monastery.  We will plunge into Rohatsu sesshin immediately afterwards, which will take us to New Year's day when we will silently ring in 2012.  I have heard the tradition is to sit until midnight on December 31st, and then have a celebratory breakfast, presumably with the sesshin precautions lifted i.e. it is ok to speak and make eye contact again.  Considering that I am usually running for my dear, sweet beddy-bye promptly at 9 p.m. each night of sesshin (I usually rise at about 3 a.m.), it should be interesting to see what happens.

In case you were wondering, the children will be surrounded by love and good cheer, not to mention oodles of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  I get a little tightness in my throat and chest when I realize that I will be missing that festivity this year, but it seemed like the right thing to do.  One thing that cheers me is the knowledge that, next year at this time, everything will completely different.  I have no doubt that I will be much more certain about the correct path for this time of year in twelve months time.  The beauty of impermanence is that the shitty things change too.

But I do not want to end on a down note, because really I do not feel down.  I am filled with optimism for 2012.  There are so many exciting things on the horizon both large and small: some potentially crazy big or just plain crazy and some small but very exciting nonetheless, and some will be, no doubt, even more life-changing than the wild stuff that happened in the mind-boggling mess that was 2011.

In the spirit of that optimism, I offer you these two videos to bring a little Canadian content into your holidays.  The first, a lovely version of an old favourite (gotta use the proper spelling here):

And second, in case things are feeling a wee bit too cheery, a good dose of Newfoundland style holiday.  'Tis like a cold gust of wind blowing over the Blomidons, across the bay and right into your front door.



May the light of the season shine through the darkness for you!