This is the time of year
When the sun is lowest in the sky,
When the days are shortest, the nights longest.
And remember – all our energy comes from the sun.

This is the time of year
When our physical energy is lowest.
When our positive and life affirming energy is weakest,
Our negative and destructive energy strongest.

This is the time of year
When it’s easy to get into self-hate and fear,
Into depression and sickness -
Into hassles with those we love.

This is the death time of the year,
The time before the rebirth,
The time before the new year’s sun.

This is a time to rest,
To be good to yourself,
To not ask too much of yourself,
A time to seek out the warmth,
To accept the death,
And to meditate upon the coming rebirth.

When I was a young boy, Christmas was my favorite time of year. I could hardly wait for it to come around again. We always had a family gathering, with me and my brother Ned and Granny Bird and Granny Marks and Uncle Ken and my mom and dad. Uncle Ken was always Santa Claus. Being our only uncle, he was easily our favorite.

We all always had a great time together too, with plenty of presents for all. Later in the day, we always had a special and wonderful family dinner, with more than enough homemade cookies and candy for afterwards. We usually ended the evening with some sort of card game. Sometimes we even got serious and played bridge. Granny Marks was really good at it. She played in tournaments and always did well.
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But I haven’t been into Christmas for a long while now, not since my Berkeley days in the early seventies. The last great Christmas that I remember was from those days. In the Grant Street house, we had a tree with Karen’s candles for lights and rolled joints for decorations, maybe a hundred or so of them. We didn’t do acid together that night, as we had done at Thanksgiving, but we sure smoked a lot of those joints.
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I still celebrate Christmas. After all, I’m a dad and I have three young boys. They are greedy little Christmas monsters, but remembering how I was as a young boy, I cater to their greed. I got over it. They will too.

This year, Callahan will be getting a laptop and some toys, and Zane will get Callahan’s old computer. Zane will also be getting a kid-sized kitchen and some toys too. He really likes to help with the cooking. Jake has a list. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I know that he likes to make things out of Legos. He’ll probably get some LEGO City sets. He was really into transformers a while back, and probably will be again after Transformers 3 comes out this summer. Right now though, he’s more into playing games on his school computer, the one he has because he’s being home schooled this year. Maybe he’ll get a game or two for his computer.

I do tell the boys that Christmas is supposed to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, not be a day of getting. I also tell them that it’s just another version of the Winter Solstice, a time of death and rebirth, a time that is celebrated by nearly all cultures. I tell them that it marks a time when the light has almost left us. After all, the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. I also tell them that, after the Solstice has come and gone, the light will begin to return – in the northern hemisphere anyway.
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Aspen and I aren’t much into Christmas ourselves except for the boys. I usually do make a list of things to buy for myself this time of year, probably a holdover from when I used to receive gifts. This year, I’m going to buy myself a pair of socks and an astrological calendar. I’d also buy myself new shoes and some good acid if I had the money.

If it were just me – and thank god, it isn’t – I probably wouldn’t even notice Christmas. I think it’s a really fucked holiday. For one thing, it’s all about greed, very little about Spirit anymore. For another, it’s the wrong time of year to celebrate as we do with Christmas. The I Ching calls this time the resting time of year. We should all be hibernating.

I do celebrate the Winter Solstice. I usually do it alone and with consciousness. I always ask the I Ching what my situation is going to be for the year that is coming. I stand on the cusp. I say goodby to the year that has just passed, and I welcome the one that is just beginning.