Sadness is not the right Mood for Celebrating Christmas

Today is the 24th December, Christmas Eve. I know that in many parts of the world, Christmas will be celebrated tomorrow with presents being distributed in the morning and a big celebration meal for lunch. In other countries, people start with a Christmas dinner on the 24th December and make gifts to each other afterwards. How is Christmas going to look like at the Ashram in this year?

We started celebrating Christmas only a few years ago, when we started having guests at the Ashram around Christmas who wanted to celebrate Christmas far from home. This is how we started having festive food and a celebration on Christmas Eve, the 24th December, the evening on which Christmas celebrations start in Germany. Additionally the 24th December was – by pure incidence – the day when I came out of the cave. So we would invite people in the morning for a good lunch and have an Ashram celebration in the evening.

I have told you before that I actually don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and definitely not the beginning of a religion. No, I simply like every reason to be happy and celebrate. I am not Christian but I can eat well and play and dance on Christmas. I am not Hindu but I can light candles and eat sweets on Diwali. It is all about happiness, about being together and just celebrating our joy and happiness. For me it does not matter what day it is, if I am happy, I can use any occasion to celebrate.

In this year however, the mood is just not right. You need happiness, a light heart and laughter in order to celebrate. We don’t feel like dancing right now – the loss of Ammaji is still too present, too recent, too big. In this mood one cannot celebrate. There would be too much memory of past celebrations, when Ammaji prepared the food with much love, when Ammaji joked with Babbaji, who was dressed as Santa Claus, when we gave her presents, items for the house which she could use and loved using afterwards.

No, it would be a very sad celebration.

Of course the children of our school will have a Christmas holiday on the 25th December, as it is an official holiday and banks and schools are closed. Although we are ourselves not going to have a big celebration, we did give each child a small gift so that it is a day of celebration for them. When we chose what we would give to the children, we thought about toys but then decided to give them something that they really need and don’t have: socks. It is cold winter in Vrindavan now and we were seeing them come in torn socks, the heels and toes out in the cold.

We included our staff in this distribution of gifts, too, and thus made them all happy, bringing a little bit of Christmas happiness into the house.

Now we wish all of you a few wonderful days, no matter of which religion you are.

Merry Christmas!