I’ve always felt out of place during Christmas. I felt my immigrant Hindu parents were awkwardly pantomiming the traditions to entertain me as a kid. They dutifully bought me presents and put up a fake tree, and when I got older the excuse was over. The specialness of the season evaporated, and all I could do was look upon other families with sadness and jealousy. As an adult I still made the motions, but something was missing.

This changed upon reading about the shamanic origins of Christmas. In his New York Times op-ed, Santa is a Psychedelic Mushroom, Matthew Salton ties familiar stories of Santa with the ritual use of pscychoactive mushrooms amongst the shamans of the Sami people of Lapland, who would use them to act as intermediaries between the mundane and spirit worlds. In Shaman Claus: The Shamanic Origins of Christmas, Matt Toussaint describes how reindeer herders of Siberia used the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushrooms (which grow beneath evergreen trees) in shamanic practices. The mushrooms are round, bright red, hung on the trees or next to a fireplace in a sock to dry and reduce their toxicity.

Toussaint writes:

“Sometimes they would place a pine tree in their yurts for ceremonial purposes.  This symbolized the World Tree, and they would harness its symbolic power to propel their spirit up and out of the yurt – through the smoke hole, i.e. the chimney.  Once the journey was complete, they would return through the smoke-hole/chimney with the gifts from the spirit world.  They also believed that the North Star was the very top of the Upper World, and because the World Tree was an axis that connected the entire cosmology, the North Star sat upon the very top of the World Tree – which is where the tradition of placing a star at the top of the tree comes from.”

I don’t know how much of all this is accurate. But in the symbolic context of ritual the parallels matter more than the accuracy. And there are many parallels here - from the Kabbalah to Nordic mythology. But what strikes me most is its closeness to tantra.

TANTRA

Tantra has been defined by many people in many ways. In the West it’s popularly associated with spiritual sex. Academics sometimes describe it in terms of microcosmic metaphysics – the body as comprised of energetic channels and psychic focal points – and how that internal framework connects to the universe. I describe it as using ritual, visualization, imagination, and mindfulness to intensify meditation and do some sort of spiritual work.

As a long time skeptic of all this woo-woo granola nonsense, I discovered, quite by accident, that this works really well for me. In fact, one stripped down version of tantric visualization is my go-to whenever I’m having serious emotional problems.

The Christmas traditions – especially the non-Christian ones -  seem very tantric. A tree with branches and baubles look like the chakra and nadi system. The North Star looks kind’ve like a crown chakra. And in many tantric practices the self is dissolved and expelled out the body to embody a deity. What better symbolic avenue is there than a chimney and jolly old Saint Nick?

I recently attended a seminar on the Chöd ceremony. This Tibetan practice involves dissolving your sense of self into the central pranic channel and expelling it out the crown chakra to become a wrathful goddess. The goddess then dismembers the body you just left, summoning a group of hungry ghosts to feast on it.

All of this sounds quite gruesome, but having practiced it it starts to make sense. It rests upon what the instructor called a “double-bind”. You satisfy your personal demons through diminishing your body - what people most commonly associate with their sense of self. Either way you win - just calling them to the feast identifies them. Serving them food not only attempts to satisfy them, but is an ego diminishing act of compassion. 

FAMILIAR AND ALIEN

While I like the practice, I experienced a sense of disjointedness in the class. We were attempting to chant in a foreign language with difficult pronunciation, using a traditional drum (a damaru) which was tricky to use. A few students had a thigh bone trumpet (a kangling) used to call hungry ghosts to dinner, which also took a bit of practice to use. It was awkward.

There is something special about using sacred implements that are not of your own culture. One can make the argument an ancient language or a thighbone horn are more special because they’re alien. But in the East there is also great store set in using structures imbued with familiar meaning. They use deities ingrained in lore, injected from repetitive underscoring from generations of belief. As a Texan I would rather use a chuckwagon dinner bell than a thighbone horn because it has more cultural significance to my individual mind (I wrote a bit about updating the practice in this manner here).

In Christmas these structures already surround us and are reemphasize continually.

REMYTHOLOGY

Christmas has always been isolating. I’m not Christian and I’m not Caucasian. From Dickensian Carolers to nativity scenes, virtually every part of the iconography growing up felt alienating. My friend – an expat in China – has the opposite problem. And my girlfriend suffered the same way when we lived abroad. To her Christmas was special, so she attempted to draw her culture around her.

We’d throw parties and put up lights. We’d play Christmas movies and make mulled wine. I’d usually find a cheap Santa hat to wear around the house.

Folklorist Arnold Van Gennep described rites as consisting of the liminal, a no man’s land between two states, in this case the sacred and the mundane. We demarcate that naturally by taking time off, making special foods, traveling to meet family, and listening to specialized music. But for me it’s not enough. Somehow, these secondary elements can emphasize the hollowness at the center of the ritual. In America, it’s symbolized in the crass commercialization of the holidays. But personally, when you feel alone, when your family isn’t invested, or when you feel disconnected in a far off land, you miss the authenticity even more. If you want to hack the culture around you, you’ve gotta do it just right.

HACKING CULTURE

Creating your own ritual by hacking culture isn’t as weird as it would seem. You see bits of it here and there - electric prayer wheels, or this DJ priest who combines techno, projected visuals, and Buddhist scripture to emphasized mantra in a temple in Japan. At the turn of the century, Western occultists like Aleister Crowley traveled East and reverse engineered ritual, combining them with Western esotericism for secret societies like Thelema and Ordo Templi Orientis. And those eventually permeated down to college fraternities and sororities. 

We already use outdated tools and implements (and use them only on special occasions) - knives, chalices, candle, etc - because it charges them with the exotic. There is a validity to using another culture’s accoutrements. But what if you could take advantage of the tools of the trade here in America during the holidays? What would an American Christmas Tantra look like?

KRIS KRINGLE, THE ALL-COMPASSIONATE

A few weeks ago, I attempted this by visualizing myself as the Christmas tree. My central channel was the trunk and psychic balls of energy hovered around it like ornaments. I dissolved myself into the central line and visualized myself moving up to the glowing North Star, the crown chakra. I imagined myself exiting through the chimney  - out of my “house” and body to become Santa Claus. I then visualized myself giving and giving to all the other chimneys of the world.

I don’t think there is as much of a “double bind” in this “Santa Tantra” as there is in the Chöd. But the powerful act of totally giving felt like a super charged loving-kindness meditation, one that was fueled by the diminishment of the self. I imagined my bag getting lighter and lighter. I gave up my red velvet coat and hat, shed my own skin, and entered a state of faceless awareness. In some Buddhist traditions they talk about the Clear Light - a sensation of bare awareness that exists behind the mindstream. I didn’t feel like I was Santa at that point. I didn’t feel like I was any person - I just was. And somehow imagining it happening to another mythic being seemed to make it work better.

A TANTRIC MIRACLE

On December 24th I visited my family. Over the last few years we’ve been working on our shaky relationship to this adopted culture. My mom threw a Christmas party earlier in the month, though most of it was just an excuse for other Indian immigrants to get together. We got a tree (a real one!) and decorated it. My mom made an Indian feast on Christmas Eve. 

But at around midnight, when not a creature is stirring, I don the sacred vestiture: a necklace of manically blinking Christmas lights and a Santa hat. I pull up the “Classic Christmas” playlist on Spotify and softly pump Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer through earbuds. The lights are all off except a glow from the Christmas tree and the fireplace I sit cross legged in front of. In Hindu rituals, food offerings (prasāda) are blessed by the divine and consumed at the conclusion of the ceremony. Mine – milk and cookies for Santa – are within easy reach by the fire.

The actual meditation progresses well. I can’t say if the full ceremony makes it any better, nor if I gain some deep spiritual attainment, but I slip into that same state of pure awareness. It remains with me after I’m done, while I dunk my cookies and munch on them in the soft silence of blinking and flickering lights.

It’s not the meditation that has given me this deep sense of satisfaction. For the first time I don’t feel a sense of hollowness on this day. It’s like finding the last, long-missing jigsaw piece and finally sliding it into the surrounding puzzle.

Tonight I feel like I belong.

photocred: Santa carving by ahoi polloi, sapta chakra (creative domain), Tibetan ritual implements by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, Santa Coke ad by Insomnia Cured Here, chalice by wht_wolf9653, Christmas ornament by Nick Amoscato