I wish you all a Merry Christmas!
I saw a newspaper article on Christmas traditions, and it talks about how they were getting annoying. I do tend to agree with that article. I believe these traditions have started to create and spread of joy of festivity, traditions especially like Santa Claus & Christmas gifts. While traditions are very important in our lives since they bring the meaning of Nature closer to us, those same traditions could lose the value of their meaning when it's all about materialization.
If you think about it a bit, now Christmas is all about gifts! Is it the real purpose of Christmas? Though I'm not a historian, I believe that way long back, Christmas or any other festival in other cultures was all about "gathering and giving" and that's what is supposed to give the joy and spread spirit of that festival.
In our current world where we receive ample of everything, new clothes, different varieties of food, new gifts pretty much daily, Christmas and other festivals lost their actual meaning. Today, festivity is all about glitter and gifts!
When I was growing up in India, there was no concept of gifts at all - at least not in our family and I believe most other families. The only gift we received for any festival was "new clothes". There was a "joy" in that waiting, not only for the new clothes but to meet family members who either visited our house or we visited theirs!
Since everything is instantaneous now (thanks to social media!), our joy now is primarily focused on getting new and relatively expensive gifts since that seem to define the spirit of Holiday. While I did think that making kids believe in Santa was for a good cause, now I don't know how correct my thoughts were then. My reasoning was that since kids anyway have to grow up and face the harsh realities of life, why not make their childhood fairy tale like at least during Christmas. But I guess that's not the right way of thinking. At least I've realized that now - I hope many of you realize the same now or sooner and teach the kids the real meaning behind festivals - not Santas or gifts but true joy comes in "gathering and giving"!
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