17 dec 2004
The Magic of the Season
By Amanda Conti
The mystery of the holiday season hits parents in many different ways. We all
want to provide a magical experience for our children. Sometimes that means lots
of everything the kids want—but what if you're on a tight budget and it's impossible
to fulfill their carefully written letters to Santa Claus? How in the world can
you keep up with greater and greater expectations year after year?
The first lesson of alchemy is exactly
what we need to exercise in
our parenting approach. Alchemy is a pseudo-science
in the eyes of any who would try to apply
its theories literally. There are magicians
out there who have figured out how to turn
lead into gold, but my take about Alchemy
is that it is a study in symbolism, like
Tarot. In symbolism we are given tools
with which to come to our own understanding
of our path. Thesymbols never change, but
our understanding of them deepens and grows.
The first lesson of Alchemy is containment.
All those funny jars in an Alchemist's
laboratory represent an idea that is essential
to
magic. You have to
put a lid on your experiments for many
reasons. If you don't put a lid on them,
one of them may hurt you very badly.
Imagine
the Nutty Professor that Jerry Lewis played.
He never quite got the lid on anything.
It's funny... but if it happened to you
the laugh might be hollow.
Containment in magic is like cooking.
If you have ever tried to make a soufflé,
you know that buying the best cheeses,
whipping the eggs just so, folding perfectly,
using the ideal dish, even heating the
oven to the right temperature, all come
to nothing if you forget to shut the oven
door. Even more, if you open the oven door
to keep checking on the soufflé, what happens?
The soufflé never rises!
So what are we
to do about the MAGIC of the holiday season?
For years I believed that I could " buy" Christmas.
I thought that finding out
which toys were the "must have" toys on my children's lists would fulfill
them. Last year I bought a barking toy dog that was bringing my daughter to tears.
It
has spent the year under her bed. My little boy is three. He's ready to put the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving. At any given moment of the day he asks me, "Is it Christmas, now?" He means it, literally!
I have not put a "lid " on Christmas,
and now, when money is tight, and when I
know that buying the perfect toy is not
going to do it for the kids or for me,
I think I'm in for a bit of an explosion.
It's okay though. Foreknowledge
is everything. I'll put myself in the mind
of the Nutty Professor! A stupid, innocent grin goes a long, long way
when the kids are young. Plus, I'm going to really try to be PRESENT
instead of giving presents. I want to create a tight little container
around the holidays!
I have a plan. We've been reducing clutter
in our house lately. We filled four
leaf bags with toys our kids were willing
to give up. I am hiding toys that haven't
been touched in the last two months. I'm
hoping to get their toys down to those
they really love by Christmas. It may come
down
to just five things, and some books. So their stockpile will look pretty
slim.
This way, when they get a few precious
things on Christmas morning it may
seem a little richer. It may not work perfectly
this year, but it will put the whole experience
in a new container. Next, we're not putting
up the tree until it is a special treat. We have a whole closet in
the basement dedicated to ornaments and
the boxes of the fake tree. The ornaments
are bought and paid for. The tree is ours. No money is leaking out.
We're waiting for a visit from their grandmother
to put it up, so that there can be a sense
of anticipation and wonder about it.
We're also doing other things during the season.
We're expecting visitors—friends and
family—and with them we plan to celebrate
bits of the season: a choir concert, a
ballet, a solstice experience. We're baking cookies.
We're playing in the snow. I must stress
however, we are not doing more than
one outside thing per week! The rest
of the time we're saving for chores, schoolwork
and books. The idea is that we create a
stark contrast between the events, the
stuff, the decorations and the rest of
life.
What is the magic that I'm actually
looking for in this holiday season? The time of year belies all the activity
we throw ourselves into. It is a season of contrasts, dark and light, abundance and humility,
and giving and receiving. I imagine that someday my children
will have a sense that all those contrasts in containment
become one another, and when that happens, a magic spark
of love grows in their hearts.
Amanda Conti, writer and mother
of two young children, lives outside of Boulder, Colorado.
She and her husband also produce experiential
creativity events, such as The Shoot Out Boulder (www.theshootoutboulder.com).
She's studied symbolism and esoterica for 20 years and
is practicing bringing that wisdom into
her parenting skills. |
