Christmas Time
Poem and poetry as reminder to seek the inner in this time of darkness
The following poem I wrote nearly 40 years ago, around this time, when my country began ramping up for Christmas, which nowadays happens before Thanksgiving. As an adult, Christmas has been low-key, even with children. Sure, there are the gifts, but in moderation. Without children, it is a celebration of family, but more importantly, it is a time to find the light within—a time for contemplation.
When I returned from my time with the Peace Corps in Cameroon and my subsequent travels to the Himalayas in Nepal, I arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area before Christmas to see family after three years abroad. I went to the large, opulent Stanford Shopping Center and was stunned by the insanity of people rushing around buying, buying, buying. This is not the American Dream, I thought. It is an American Nightmare.
Years later, when my oldest son, in his early twenties, asked me to go with him to a mall the day after Thanksgiving on what is called Black Friday, the biggest day of consuming, my first response was no. Then I decided to make it a practice to find a neutral place and quell my aversion to it all. I sat in a foyer and watched the chaos of people running, shoving, frantically going from store to store before their items of choice were sold out. It was not an easy lesson to refrain from aversion. Even my son realized the madness.
With all that said, here is what I wrote, those many long years before.
Christmas Time
Outside in this city of images of Los Angeles, the world swirls about in madness in this time of celebrating the birth of Spirit and inner Peace. All of Nature, in this time of the longest night, reminds the humans to quiet one’s life and look inside, to make room for contemplation. But in this city, and all the cities of this land, the bright lights of advertisement signs pull us away from traveling upon our breath into the cradle of our souls. And to the malls we run.
O fools, run you hither and thither
To buy things that will only fade away.
With smiles and bright packages
You give gifts that will last
As long as a thought.
You scurry around
Like rats on a warehouse floor,
Cursing and fighting each other
Over crumbs you plan to give with love.
Review your gifts
And see what you wish to get.
What promotion might you receive?
What appeasement of a familial should?
What does the Master give
At this time of celebrating
The birth of the Master?
Nothing more important
Than the blessing of a smile.
Why does the Master smile?
For he sees things as they really are.
He smiles at himself.
Under the heavy foot of time,
As gifts break
Or are torn asunder
Or crumple into tangled shapes,
The smile of the Master never fades.
Why should it fade
When the Master is safe from time?
Smile.
Smile with the knowing of who you are
In the Peace of the Spirit
Of this day.
Go into the quietude
Of the cavern of the Self
And know the Truth.
There is no one to give a gift to;
No one from whom to receive.
Be your Self.
Free from the rampage of time.
And smile.
Smile upon your Self.
And thus smile upon the world.
— Janaka Stagnaro, excerpt for Footprints Along the Shore of an Incoming Time: Impressions of a Fellow Traveler
Thank you for reading. I wish everyone, in whatever form they practice, a joyous celebration and a time to find the light within the darkening days.
It's frightening, Janaka. That black Friday sale (that lasts a month) is insane. I can't stand shopping at the best of times. I stay well away from shops for most of December (except for groceries). We don't buy many gifts, just for the grandkids, and it's done online months beforehand. Better. Love the poem :) Wishing you a lovely, relaxing festive season, my friend.
I am in complete agreement with you on the obscene commercialization of the holiday. Your discomfort is the same discomfort Christ caused: naming how systems turn holiness into spectacle and compassion into performance. In that sense, your poem stands closer to the original radical Christianity than to its modern commercial celebration. It’s not scolding from outside the tradition, it’s a lament spoken from within it, on behalf of the poor, the quiet, and the forgotten.
That tension you feel isn’t unresolved.
It’s faithful.
That said, I wish all my friends who celebrate Christmas, a very merry Christmas.