By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness

Christmas is supposed to be a time for love, joy and being with the people who mean the most, but unfortunately, it’s become a time of stress and frustration for many. It doesn’t have to be this way, but to change anything about it will require us to change how we see it.

I don’t discourage getting gifts, but perhaps we should be aware of why we do it. When we are, we’ll see that the consumerism is out of hand and people have forgotten the holiday’s true intention.

It’s ingrained into our culture that the only way to show someone you love them on Christmas is to buy that perfect gift, no matter how expensive, but this isn’t what the holiday is meant to represent.

Ignoring for this post the apparent connection between Christmas and magic mushrooms, it’s generally supposed to be about love, family and giving.

Its intention should be to bring people together without the need for expensive gifts, and we can achieve this by changing our mindset and what we do during the holiday season.

For example: How many people have the thought to give a homemade gift instead of buying one?

Have scientists stumbled across a structure similar to Stonehenge at the bottom of Lake Michigan? Insanely this story is not new, it’s actually old but it went so under reported that nobody knows about it. In 2007, 40 feet below the surface of Lake Michigan where the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve is, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College, found the site with his colleague Brian Abbot after voyaging across the lake in a ship that contained sonar equipment, which is generally used to examine old shipwrecks.

After several passes they found a row of stones that piqued their interest. When they sent down divers to visit the site and obtain photographs, they were left somewhat discouraged. “It was really spooky when we saw it in the water,” Holley said. “The whole site is spooky, in a way. When you’re swimming through a long line of stones and the rest of the lake bed is featureless, it’s just spooky.”

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

What is love? What is ‘true’ love? Can it even be defined? Our idea of what true love is today most likely comes from a fairytale, movie, or reality TV show, and the definition has likely changed many times. But we all have certain conditions attached to our idea of what love is, or some sort of criteria drawn up for what our ‘perfect match’ would look like. The right partner is required to have certain things, be a certain way, and like certain activities – and that’s okay.

But perhaps true love is simpler than popular culture would have us believe. As Thich Nhat Hanh (a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk) explains below, if there is love/kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness, according to Buddhist teaching, you are experiencing true love. It’s pretty simple. True love doesn’t necessarily have to be something magical that sprung out of a fairy tale.

On the weekend following Friday, November 13th, 2015, the world united in supporting the people of Paris by temporarily updating their profile picture with the colours of the French flag. 130 innocent people died that day.

As Christmas fast approaches,  we would like to ask you to now unite in supporting the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims who are being persecuted both in the Middle East and the West, and in remembering all those who are subject to war and persecution, as well as the brave people around the world who are devoting their energies to helping them.