Sentient Being

We’re celebrating Christmas Eve by going to Nirvana. No, not the Buddhist Nirvana.  The Indian one.  The Nirvana Indian restaurant in Woodstock. We have a 7o’clock reservation and we’ll pop into the  Candlestock  candle store and buy a Christmas candle if they are still open when we get to town.

That’ll be it it as far as Christmas celebrations go, although I may tune into the National Football League’s Christmas Day games, even though the games scheduled for Christmas 2025 are both lackluster and largely meaningless and not I’m sure what the schedulers had hoped would be the case.  But it is what it is and beggars can’t be choosers and so I’ll probably tune in to keep this particular Christmas tradition alive and kicking.

The thing I like most about Christmas are the Christmas lights and the Christmas plants.  We have a big Christmas tree with plenty of lights, both blinking and non-blinking and we have sparkling Christmas lights decorating both the inside and the outside of our house, and I bought four new Christmas plants this year to add to festive feeling and wonderful Christmas atmosphere that our place currently exudes in great measure.

And what about Jesus?  The “Reason for the Season,” as they say.

Let’s leave Jesus out of it.  He’s not really involved since there is no way he was born on December 25 to begin with.  He was probably, according to several astute astrological studies, born sometime in September.

It’s pretty clear to anyone who cares to delve into the situation that the early Christian were only too happy to glom onto pagan holidays and transform them into Christian ones for the sole purpose of making the newly spreading religion of Christianity more palatable to the heathen masses they were trying to convert.

And from the looks of things, they did a pretty good job. So called Christmas trees, yule logs, mistletoe, gift-giving around the Winter Soltice and a lot more came directly from the Druid and the Norse pagan traditions and were quickly reframed and adapted to suit Christian theology around the meaning and significance of the life of Jesus of Nazareth who subsequently became Jesus the Christ.

And let’s not even get into Easter.  That’s pretty much the same story all over again with Easter eggs and Easter bunnies that can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon fertility and renewal rites celebrated around the time of the Spring Equinox.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have nothing against Jesus and if fact, I happen to be a big fan of his, even tough just like the Buddha’s birthday that the Buddhists make a big deal about, I’m  not into celebrating anyone’s birthday, except my wife’s birthday, which is a different story altogether and one that I don’t feel any need to explain or justify.  My wife is pretty much a pagan and really loves the Winter Solstice and I am totally cool with that.  Not only do I enjoy going to the Phoenician restaurant in Phoenicia NY every year to celebrate her birthday but I also enjoy doing what is necessary to keep marriage and my family life sailing along smoothly and joyfully.

And it’s going pretty good, thanks to Jesus, to Christmas, to the Winter Solstice with all its pagan accoutrements: the lights, the plants, the Christmas tree, etc.

I’m not thanking Buddha though.  Buddhists really annoy me, and I don’t want to give them any props or kudos of any kind.  Maybe I’ll go more into that in tomorrow’s exciting episode.

This is Sentient Being reporting from Nirvana.  Not the Indian restaurant.  The Buddhist one.