Christmas/Christ-mass

Peppermint liqueur, an after-dinner mint and thou, my dearest readers, are all I need to spend a Christmas Eve in my parents house. I started the day with absinthe, things simply spiralled from there…to be honest I haven’t really drunk since I left for Japan. I’m a bit freaked out by how much I do when I do, and its all been spirits so far, I’m hoping to inject a bit of wine into the system tomorrow over dinner. I woke up early today and downed a pint of the Princess’s patent hangover cure (I woke up before the hangover had hit), went back to bed and woke again to come downstairs, mix up some sweets etc and part of Dads present over absinthe. It comes to something when you’re happy with a hangover cure that means you can keep drinking on top of it. Still, it’s only one week a year when I’m pretty much permanently not sober, thats good right?

I don’t know. In anycase this entry is divided up into spiritual and emotional. To be honest I’ve been alcoholled up (though I maintain not actually drunk) for a good 24 hours now so I’m giving no guarantees as to content.

Tonight I went to my first Christian service in three years, it was of course the carol service on Christmas Eve (not the one I really like as I prefer the Sunday before which goes all out for carols), I like carols and to be honest I didn’t expect to find the service as uncomfortable as I did. In Japan I began to wonder whether I should put something relating to Christ on my general altar as do some Shinto practicioners, after all I started out a Christian, shouldn’t that somehow be acknowledged was my thinking.

Lately I have been reading blogs with pagan and secular opinions about Christmas, Yule etc. I’ve been struck by how little Christian comment there has been. I guess I got it from the vicar in the church tonight. I hadn’t realised until I was in church today quite how many disagreements I had with the religion of Christianity. Since being in Japan things had kind of faded for me into well it’s just another religion, and I suppose that it is, except that its the one I came from. Thats quite a big thing for me. I was brought up Christian and I was a hugely religious child.

My opinions on this part of the year being called Christmas are largely that I don’t really mind what the rest of the world chooses to call it but to me this is the religious festival of Yule and thats got nothing, for me as a Wiccan, to do with Christ or his worship. A number of pagans on blogs have expressed the opinion this year that they want to call the specific festival that they celebrate ‘Yule’ (or Mother Night or whatever) and the general period of the year Christmas. On reading I thought ‘why not’, I suppose I really think that it doesn’t matter what you call it… except that it does. Christmas, the Mass of Christ. Its huge, its right there in the name the Christianity of it and for me, who came from Christianity its hugely important that I don’t call this season Christmas. I don’t worship Christ anymore and this came home to me in the church today. I really disagree quite profoundly with a number of the sentiments expressed by the vicar and large amounts of the readings taken from the book. I found that I knew the readings mostly off by heart (the vicar stumbled more than I did in my head) and most of the service too. In fact I have a private bet with myself that the bits I found I was mistaken on are the bits which have been modernised more recently than when I went to church. I found myself having to very deliberately not go along with the Lords Prayer and the Creed in my head, because to do that would have been for me some sort of acceptance of a faith which I find more and more emphatically is not mine.

To call this time of year Christmas is something I cannot do because there is so much that I disagree with Christianity on that to invoke the name of their god into this most precious part of the year would be dishonest of me. I don’t mind being wished a happy christmas by pretty much anyone, or a happy whatever else either, I’ll take it in the spirit which it is meant. But for someone who finds herself to be really quite religious to think of this time of year as Christmas is becoming more and more uncomfortable.

This is an emotional time of year for me, especially being, as I am, in Royston Vasey. I can remember sneaking out of the house to use the payphone during the romance with Blue Eyes and I can remember the Christmas Eve conversation over that payphone which ended in us suddenly not going out any more.

I get to thinking over these holidays about how lovely it was to be in my flat and on my own, and at the same time enjoy hugely the crowds of people that will descend on us tomorrow (family as well as randoms).

Emotions are things I have problems with dealing with and also expressing. I prefer sex for reasons outlined a million times over. I prefer friendships. I prefer being on my own and writing reams and reams of things and painting and painting until my emotions are scrawled across walls for people to read. Perhaps I prefer this because in writing/painting out my emotions I am discovering my own secret language which I have my suspicions no one else entirely gets. So in expressing these emotions of mine I am also not communicating them at all and that suits me just fine.

Blue Eyes, I think, treated me rather callously earlier in the year. That doesn’t mean that I am anymore out of love with him than I have ever been. I have theories about love. (Other than her being a total bitch who wants to catch me out) I don’t think that love ever goes away. I don’t mean that were Blue Eyes to walk in here now with a diamond solitaire it’d be weddings in vegas all the way, don’t by any means get me wrong. I’d slap him and pawn the diamon at least. But once someone creeps into you heart or once you open your heart up to them then they’re in for good. Despite callous treatment I sent Blue Eyes a card this year, I will next year and I still want to associate with him and be friends. If he came crawling in here in need of a blood transfusion I’d do it without a backward glance. I love him, I always will. He was my first love and first loves are a hugely special thing which need to be treated with respect.

I know that when I hear the word love that my instinct is to run, its not because my heart got broken, my heart got used to being broken and I mended it myself with a couple of bits of sealing wax and some string. Its because I don’t trust myself when I can’t think properly and I’m running entirely on instinct and hope. Its the most intense roller coaster that there could ever be and eventually I learned how to enjoy the ride but I still mistrust myself when I’m in love.

I’m twenty four years old and I have been in love six times, out of those six I am friends with three, going out with two and have been cut off from one. Out of those six I would entirely count on my beloved Jellicle Cat and Gentleman Friend. Of the other four whilst I was in love with them I would have entirely counted on none of them.

Looking at my lovers, friends, muses, people I have had incredible sexual chemistry with I would count on Cornish Bloke, Cuddles, Daemonic, FFG, FoxyJonno, Last NS, Princess Lex, Torch and a good deal many others but I can’t list everyone. My point is that there is love and there is friendship, I suppose that does it down, there is being in love and there is loving and loving in my head wins out everytime.

If I was only in love with the Jellicle Cat and my Gentleman Friend then it would be the purest, best and most intense emotion I could imagine (and indeed it is) but I love them as well and that kind of means that this year maybe things are a bit clunky and stressy as we work out how to live with each others but they’re good. My problems with expressing things are understood and as friends we can move forward with this insane and powerful bitch of a river who keeps wanting to drag me under.