Bread or flowers

The stomach is crying for a piece of bread; the hair is crying for a bunch of flowers.
-South Indian Proverb

It is Christmas time and many of us here in North America are busy scampering around buying this or that to please our loved ones and ourselves.  We are stressed to the max possibly wondering why we are doing this to ourselves.  Every Christmas I am consumed with that "stressed out"  feeling and if I break it down I see I am feeling a certain pressure to adhere to socially imposed expectations that I choose willingly to adhere to every year; I feel guilt about being so materialistic...buying gifts for people who already have so much while people in the world are starving; I feel worry over the possibility of  offending someone with the wrong gift or the lack of a gift  and about the further debt  all this purchasing puts me in.  I really feel stressed because I know this is not what my soul needs...this is not what Christmas is all about.  This is ego's version of Christmas I am trapped in( willingly) and I don't much like it.

This year is different.  Christmas is only five days away and I have nothing done and I really do not care lol.  I see my past behaviour, ego's demanding expectation for what it is. I don't want to get caught up in its circus anymore.  Besides I have been placed in a wonderful situation circumstance wise where I have no choice but to step away from materialism.  I do not have the means to buy anything much for anyone.  I will take a small loan from D. to buy my children something small and I will make sure that I give to those in need but that's it.  I will use what I have: photographs worth framing, a few chosen words and maybe some dolls made of toilet tissue rolls and pipe cleaners (lol) as tokens of my well wishes and love. That's what gifts are meant to be,  aren't they?  Tokens of our love not garlands for the hair?

The priority is to feed the belly's of those in need.  What would happen, I wonder, if society finally got it right.  And if all we spend on each other, who already have so much, went to feed those who have so little?  If we gave gifts of ourselves to each other rather than things shot out of an assembly line? If we focused more on simply being over the holiday than all this doing in the form of shopping, purchasing? 

Please know...I am not being self righteous.  I am still caught up in all this Christmas stuff.  I have no right to judge anyone!!! I am just saying guilt and worry and pressure are emotions that should never go with this season...any season really. I am  sure I am not the only one who feels uneasy  with ego's version of Christmas. 

Wouldn't it be nice to embrace Spirit's version of Christmas instead...love and peace and joy...nothing else? Just saying ...Wouldn't it be nice if we gave gifts where they were truly needed: the material stuff where there is so little, bread to the empty stomachs and the being there stuff to a society that sometimes forgets the importance of connecting to others, and Self?

I have to work on that in my mind and my life.  This year...I have been given a wonderful, blessed opportunity to do so.

All is well.