The True Meaning of Christmas (for me)

  "The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening. No doubt, no awakening." C.C. Chang, The Practice of Zen. 

    I've been trying to communicate my excitement about this quotation since early this morning. And I must admit, it's causing me grief. When I first came across it (in a book called The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk), I had an epiphany: this saying explains something very important about me.
     When I excitedly read it to Andy, he drew a blank.
     "Doubt!" He shook his head. "That's not positive. Doubt is fear. It holds me back. Doubt is bad."
     "Oh, no," I countered. "Doubt is powerful. It encourages questioning. It challenges authority. It requires courage."
    We had a fight, I am ashamed to admit. Or at least, a discussion, as he prefers to call it.
     "The real question," he said, when we had hashed and rehashed the definition of doubt, is why it bothers you so much that I don't get this in the same way that you do."
     Once again, he nailed it! He really is the perfect partner for me. He calls my BS. He tries to understand me. He will go down the rabbit hole to make his point.
     So I've been stewing over this, and struggling to get it just right.
   
     Here we are, a few days after Solstice.
        We have just passed through the calendar's dark season, when the days shorten and cool after the equinox, and winter begins to whisper. Ever so gradually the time we daily spent with darkness lengthened.
     Each year at the poles it happens, this opportunity of genuine genesis: all of nature is reduced to its essence, which lies in wait for the light to return with heat and new growth potential.
     What we incubate in the dark will come to life.
     I'm talking about the psyche, and yet the darkness is real.
     At this time of year I find such relief--and release--in the luxury of night, this vast nothing being the perfect balance to summer's fecund force. The day makes hasty crystal intrusion into the deep velvet dark. There can be no mistake that we live in an ancient and vast universe of night.
     Making peace with our darkness is key to happiness, and vital if we want to thrive instead of merely survive.
         What do I mean by our darkness?

    In the Judeo-Christian backstory, God says, let there be light, and there is light. And God sees that the light is good. 
          Light illuminates. Light brings sight. An epiphany is the sudden realization of comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something (Urban Dictionary). 
     Doubt can be considered darkness. And doubt can bring us into the light.
    Take for example, the myth of old Mr. Claus. This Jolly Old red-cheeked ambassador of vestigial Christianity has us in its thrall. Everything about him is held sacred. We lie to our children--in elaborate detail with massive cultural and capital support--and we expect non-believers to keep this faith.
     When an innocent shouts that the emperor is naked, we shush him. 
     Say what? 
     I am on the side of doubt: questioning, non-conformist, creative thought ought not be suppressed. Wondering is mindful wandering. Neural plasticity is the very stuff of life. Unraveling and re-ordering spark evolution, and even encourage revolution. 
     It takes a lifetime to sort out what to reject and what to keep. Just because it's always been done this way does not mean it must be done this way always. 
     Doubt, as C.C. Chang suggests, encourages awakening. Darkness illuminates the light.