Living up to the 'true spirit' of Christmas?

People enjoying Christmas decorations in Johannesburg, South Africa. Luca Sola/AFP via Getty ImagesIf the media, popular entertainment, and retail habits are taken as indicators then the celebration of Christmas is no longer just the reserve of Christians. This has some consequences for the religious and non-religious alike.

In popular culture and the media, Christmas is portrayed as a time of happiness, togetherness, generosity, and peace. In the “made for Christmas” movies, such as those on the popular Hallmark Channel, a “feel good” message is the order of the day.

Whether it be the rekindling of a long-lost love or reconcilingbetween family members after a long and painful conflict, viewers are led to believe that there is a certain kind of “magic” at work during what has become known in largely secular terms as “the holiday season”. 

Many people believe, either overtly or tacitly, that Christmas and the celebrations surrounding it will bring them joy, peace, happiness and togetherness.

In my research, which is in a field called public theology, I study such “beliefs” to try to understand where they come from, why people hold them, and what implications they have for our social, political and economic life.

I call these “secular beliefs” to differentiate them from traditional “religious beliefs”. A secular belief is not formally attached to a religion, or has become detached from a particular religion over time. In this sense, Christmas has come to embody a kind of “secular spirituality”. This has much more in common with the dominant symbols and aspirations of our age (such as leisure, pleasure, social control and consumption) than it does with its religious roots.

Understanding Christmas

Christmas, as the name suggests, is linked to the birth of Jesus the Christ. As a professor of theology, I have often jokingly said, “Christ is not Jesus’s surname”. The word “Christ” comes from the Greek word Χρίστος (Chrístos), which is the Greek translation for the Hebrew word “messiah” (מָשִׁיחַ or māšīaḥ). For Jewish people, and later for Christians (people who name themselves after their messiah, Jesus the Christ), the messiah was God’s promised liberator – a King who would come to liberate God’s people from their oppressors and lead them in peace and prosperity.

Christians believe that Jesus is the promised messiah (according to passages in the Bible, such as Isaiah 9:6-7, John 4:25 and Acts 2:38). He came preaching a message of love, peace and anti-materialism. 

Early in Christian history, Christians began to celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ (the promised liberator) in special services, what became known as the “mass” after the Latin word missa. Hence, it was the combination of those two words that later became one word, Christmas, a feast that celebrates liberation, peace and joy through the messiah.

When presented in these terms, it would not be surprising to ask what the contemporary presentations of Christmas (particularly in the western world) have to do with the celebration of Jesus the Christ. Santa Claus, snowmen and reindeer seem to have replaced Jesus and his disciples. 

Instead of focusing on messianic liberation and anti-materialism, Christmas is focused on parties, family gatherings, and gift-giving. In other words, like so much of western modernity, the focus has turned from the sacred to the secular and from God to the human self.

Research shows that there are seven primary activities and experiences that are attached to the contemporary Christmas holiday:

• Spending time with family 

• Participating in religious activities

• Maintaining cultural, national, or family traditions (such as decorating a Christmas tree) 

• Spending money on others to buy gifts 

• Receiving gifts from others

• Helping others (such as a local charity) and

• Enjoying the sensual aspects of the holiday (such as good food and drink, rest, and relaxation).

However, the same research shows that for many people, these “peaceful” and “joyous” expectations are not met. Christmas is no longer a time of joy, generosity, family togetherness and rest. 

Rather, the contemporary expectations of the festive “season” – such as the costs associated with gift giving, travel, celebrations (such as work functions, family gatherings, and community events) – can lead to dissatisfaction, stress, conflict and disappointment. Perhaps you can relate? 

Moreover, the burden on women is often much higher than it is on men. Women are often expected to arrange gatherings, buy gifts, prepare food, clean up the aftermath and keep the peace.

Rekindling the true spirit of Christmas

So, taking these realities into account, what might you do to rediscover the “true”, or at least the historical “spirit” of Christmas this year (whether you are religious or not)?

Here are a few suggestions, based on sociological research.

First, social and psychological research shows that in general, but also at Christmas, people report far greater “well-being”

when experiences of family closeness and helping others were particularly salient.

Second, that “diminished well-being” is reported where people’s experiences and expectations “focused on the materialistic aspects of the season (spending and receiving)”. Moreover, the research showed that religious people who actively participated in religious gatherings tended to have a more positive experience of Christmas, with their expectations largely being fulfilled.

So, whether you are Christian, or have more of a secular spirituality, it may well be wise to recapture something of the historical “spirit” of the Christ-mass message by engaging in the responsible use of money and time, choosing positive consumption practices, while seeking to foster good relationships with family, friends and colleagues.

Moreover, pay careful attention to issues such as the gendered division of labour and responsibility by sharing the work and effort. In doing so, you just may have a happier Christmas.

[I wrote this article for The Conversation in December 2022].

Realistic elongation and your perfect day.

Work-Life balance is an important topic.  I hardly know a person who does not struggle with some aspect of it.  There are some who need the rest because they work too hard, and others who long for work to be able to pay their bills and meet their obligations.

In my own life I have constantly struggled with work-life balance.  The real misnomer in that is of course that work is part of life!  It is not as if I balance my work off against my life.  The two are one.  However, what I constantly battle with is finding a realistic rhythm that can sustain the needs of my family (and my own physical and ego needs) yet allow enough space and time for true and authentic life with my God, wife, children, and friends.  I never have enough time for deep prayer, uninterrupted and unhurried conversation with my wife and kids.  I seldom feel energized or free enough to truly be free for play.  Even when I am not working I am thinking about work.

I have some friends who strive for absolute freedom.  This is a wonderful desire, but I think that it could disconnect one from your what is realistically possible.  It is not possible to live one's life without making some measure of compromise towards the needs, desires and demands of others.  As a parent I have had to learn that my sleep patterns are less important than my children's sleep patterns.  As a husband I have had to learn that my mood and desire frequently need to give way to my wife's needs and mood.  As a citizen of a country I have had to learn that my will must sometimes take a back seat to the greater will of the people.

Realistic compromise is the name of game!  Now of course you don't want to compromise to such an extent that you never achieve what you want or need - I had a relative who died before he retired because he had planned to 'start living' when he had enough money to do so.  That is the opposite extreme.

Nigel Marsh (tip of the hat to my psychologist friend Phil Collier who pointed this talk out to me!), the author of the wonderful book 'Overworked underlaid' (no that is not a typo), presents this very informative TEDx Talk, in which he discusses the delicate balance between work and daily life.  He offers the following advice (well, at least this is what I gleaned from his talk as 'advice'):  

- Write out your ideal day.

- Then realise that it is unlikely that you will have that specific day too often.

- Then plan to 'live' the elements of that day over a realistic time span.

In other words plan a 'realistic elongation' of your ideal day!  By doing this you will have some plan to work towards that removes the pressure of having to have a perfect day, every day.  At the same time you should have measurable instances of blessing, freedom and unhindered choice.  Yet, you will also allow enough space to fit your life into the lives of others.  This concession is not only necessary, I believe that in the long term we shall find that we cannot simply live our lives for ourselves.  Some of the most rewarding experiences I've had in life are things that I would not necessarily have chosen for myself.  Yet, by 'giving' a little I have met wonderful people, learned new things and seen magnificent places.

What do you think?  How do you manage 'work life balance'?

The science of getting happy and being happy

One of the best books I've read in the last year is Gretchen Rubin's book 'The Happiness Project'.  It was filed with great facts, it was written in a wonderfully personal style, and left me feeling happy!  

What more could you ask for!?

Today I saw from her facebook feed that she was interviewed on her book together with Dr Ian Smith (a medical doctor who wrote a book on the science of hapiness).

Watch the video below.  It is a great introduction to the topic.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I wrote a post on the neuroscience of hapiness that you can read here - it comes from some research I did for PhD.

And, here's a previous post I wrote on Gretchen Rubin's book.

How to live before you die!

If you knew you were going to die in a month's time what would you do with remaining time?  This is not a rhetorical question!  Please do leave a few comments in the comments section at the bottom of this post!  I would love to hear how you would spend your final month living!

This great video clip below is a youtube video of Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple Computer, speaking at a graduation (in the US it is called a commencement) at Stanford University.  I got it from the TED website.

I would love to hear your feedback on both Steve Job's speech, and the concept of 'living before you die'.  Is it possible to live with that kind of intensity and determination for a sustained period?  Or is this just the stuff of motivational talks and popular 'self help' theories?

Here's the little blurb from the TED website:

At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself.

On this note, I would once again recomend Gretchen Rubbin's fantastic book 'The Happiness Project'.  I so enjoyed reading it and found the book itself to be a source of great joy and inspiration.  I made a post about it here: Be intentional about finding joy in life! 

Update on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:44PM by Dr Dion Forster

What I forgot to mention in the last post is that Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a form of cancer in 2009 that attacked his liver and he was desperately ill - eventually needing to have a liver transplant.

Amazingly, after his transplant he returned to work!

I'd love to hear your comments and input!

Be intentional about finding joy in life!

I recently read a single line that has left an impression upon me - 'At work, on purpose'!  I think that sometimes we forget that where we are, what we can do, and who is around us are all very important in God's plan for our lives and the lives of those among whom we live and work.

I have met far too many people that live for a different reality - heck I have even fallen prey to escapism myself.

I recently read Gretchen Rubbin's fantastic book The happiness project.  In it she discusses the discipline of cultivating thankfulness and joy for what you already have.  She calls the discipline 'mindfulness' - I have often spoken of 'living with intention'.

It is important to build such simple little disciplines into our lives so that we can make the most of what we have, instead of wishing our lives away!

So, tomorrow I shall return to work, and I pray that I will be there 'on purpose', i.e., fulfilling the purpose for which God has placed me there.  I will have chances to transform both people and systems with Christ's love.  I can model the including love of Christ, make a stand for justice, and gently do my best to make the lives of those around me better.

But, this requires intention!  Here's a sneak preview of my next radio broadcast from my program 'The Ministry and Me' from http://www.radiopulpit.co.za - as always I would love to hear your ideas and feedback!  You can download the MP3 file here (6MB)

Why you're unhappy, and what you can do about it!

Here's another post on the brain... Please don't give up reading this as soon as you see that it's about the brain!! In this post I have attempted to share some explanation for why you do some of the things you do, and why you feel some of the things you feel. And, I hope that when you understand how powerful your brain is in shaping your conscious mind that you will begin to take deliberate measures to manage your mind. It is possible, and it will make your life a lot better!

The inspiration for this post came from a hilarious skit by Bob Newhart... In the video Bob Newhart acts something like a Rogerian Gestalt therapist with a woman who suffers from claustrophobia. Each time she expresses her fear he simply yells at her to 'STOP IT' (i.e., stop being afraid). Of course that is not good psychotherapy practise! But, it did stimulate some thought about whether one is able to understand and control one's reactions to experiences and internal struggles that one may face?

I think you can (to some extent at least!)

The human brain is the most complex of all of the organs of the human person. We understand very little about its actual functioning, although we are able to understand some of the more basic electrical and chemical processes that can be related to certain actions and feelings. In some senses we're able to understand the processes of the brain without truly have a handle on the brain itself.

The simplest explanation for explaining how the brain functions is to say that it is an organ that is designed to ensure survival. The brain is a in fact a fairly primitive organ that has evolved in complexity throughout the ages - yet at its very base it has the same basic purpose - ensuring that you (and we as a species) continue to survive. In order to to this the brain has three basic functions.

1) The brain receives input from the senses (we see things, hear things, feel things, smell things and taste things).
2) The brain processes the input that it gets from the senses and then decides what to do with it.
3) The brain sends messages and instructions to different parts of the body to respond to the exogenous and endogenous inputs it has received.

The receptive part of the brain is a complex science all of its own. Each of the senses is routed primarily to a certain area of the brain where it fires up the dendrites and we can measure electromagnetic activity in that particular area (or at least we can measure a dominance of magnetic activity in a particular area). For example sight is directly connected to the lower brain - interestingly the eyes are the only part of the brain that is visible to other persons! The nerves in the eyes are directly connected to the brain and in fact form a direct primitive function of the brain. The right eye is connected to the left hemisphere and vice versa. I chose vision as the example for input stimuli since vision takes up to 1/3 to 1/2 of brain function. When I share the few points about the primal functioning of the brain it will become clear why this is the case. However, it will suffice to say at this point that vision is not a function of the eyes, rather it is fundamentally a function of the brain!

The simplest way to explain this is to say that we don't 'see' everything that our eyes take in. There is common experiment that brain science lecturers us to show this to their students. It is known as the pictorial superiority effect. The students are shown a video of a group of persons standing in a circle throwing a ball to one another. They are then asked to count the number of times the ball is passed between two (or more) of the participants. What happens in the brain of the observer is that their reticular activation sensor is activated to only process the persons they're watching and the movement of the ball. In the video a person dressed in a guerilla suit walks into frame, walks between the persons and then moves out of frame. When one asks the viewers what they saw almost none of them will report seeing the guerilla! Surely a guerilla among a group of people playing with a ball should be something noticeable? Well, in this case it is not. The brain has 'tuned out' that particular stimulus input because it either does not fit the frame of reference for what the brain expects to see, or simply because it is not necessary to complete the task that was set (counting how many times particular persons pass the ball to one another).

So, how does vision work?

1. Stimulus received through the retina and is transduced (i.e., turned into an electrical pulse so that it can pass along the nerves into the brain)
2. From the retina it is sent to the Lateral Gerniculate nuclease in the middle brain, there it is sorted before it is processed.
3. Next the signal is passed on to an area that is known as Broadman 17 version 1 (in the back of the brain in the occipital lobe to be precise) where it is parsed out (i.e. sent to shapes, faces, objects area of the brain…) There is, for example, a section in the brain that detects horizontal lines, a section that detects colours, another that detects faces and so on…
4. Finally it is sent to the area of the brain where it is judged, edited and sent as a response for action or emotion.

We must remember that the brain does not deal with reality! It deals with survival as I said earlier. It will take an input, edit it and then rework it to cause the rest of the brain and body to process it towards survival.

So, what are these 'survival' instincts in the brain that I have been referring to?

Well, once again as with all aspects of the brain they are fairly complex, but they can be roughly explained using some analogous examples. In this case the example refers to primitive life - in days of yore (and here I'm not talking about before the advent of cell phones or microwaves... I'm talking even before the advent of the wheel!) the primary concern of very human person was mere survival.

Sometimes my daughter, who is 9, is rather surprised to discover things such as the fact that eggs don't come from grocery stores, and that there is a direct genetic link between the hamburger she's eating and the cows we saw grazing in the fields... Survival was tough! And so the brain was designed (if one could use that word without causing too much of a storm) to help humans survive.

The three basic survival instincts (that are a link between the functioning of the brain and primitive human life) are:

1. Can what I am sensing eat me? OR can I eat what I am sensing? This has to do with short term survival of the individual or family unit and naturally has to do with sustenance and safety.
2. Can I mate with what I am sensing? OR does what I am sensing want to mate with me? Don't start laughing (or blushing) now! The brain is hard wired to find a mate in order to procreate to sustain the species in the longer term.
3. Do I recognize what I am sensing? This is a slightly more complex phenomenon, but it has to do with learning. For example, if I have been burned by fire I my brain will recognize it and make the link with pain and so caution me to stay away from it. But, this is also just a basic function of spatial recognition (i.e., I can remember where I live, I know where to find water and food, and I know the difference between humans and other life forms...)

Now amazingly these simplistic analogies can help us to understand quite a lot about human behavior. These primal urges are hard wired into the very primitive parts of our brain (over which we have very little conscious control) and so a great deal of joy and pain can be associated with trying to work out these simple things in a much more complex contemporary world. For example, the loss of one's job can be directly related to the need to survive through having the means to gain sustenance (even if it is a McDonalds burger that you're buying at the Mall!) Or, it explains why contemporary advertising and action movies always seems to have three common elements... Fear of death (survival), beautiful people (the intrinsic urge to mate), and simplistic repetition of concepts to enforce behaviour (i.e., a catchy slogan or jingle that the brain can recognize and process without much conscious effort).

So, if you took some time to consider what some of the elements of your life are that are making you unhappy I'm sure you would find that they stem either of an external (exogenous) circumstance or event that enters through your senses, or some endogenous (internal) struggle within yourself that gets sent to the brain (such as a 'hunger' for something, or the 'fear' of something, or the inability to recognize meaning or a discernible direction or pattern to your life).

The simple answer to most of these struggles is to begin by changing either the context or the content of your life.

If you live in a threatening relationship, find yourself under unmanageable stress, or are not having your most basic needs adequately met it is probably an indicator that you should plan to find some other context in which to exist. That's context stuff.

If that is not possible then you need to get more of what I have devoted my life to, spirituality and faith, the content of one's life (what regulates and consciously engages our senses and shapes our minds, thus managing our responses) is a valid and necessary aspect of every human life! I don't know a single person who is free from fear, hunger (even in it's subtler forms), the need for survival and a longing for some sense of higher order and purpose. Do you? This is the content stuff.

What do you think? Can spiritual exercises like meditation, prayer, regulated disciplines like exercise, fasting, service of others, etc., help to overcome the 'primal' struggles that we face in our brains? If you have an example to share that would be wonderful!

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