Celebrations Can Connect Cultures

Throughout the world, various cultures celebrate, often at the same time, a spiritual holiday or season of the year in their own unique way. A societal sacred geometry of sorts, these ceremonies and rituals share a pattern and sometimes origins.

Unfortunately, depending on the faiths and beliefs involved, the celebration can often be a hijacked version or mashup replacement of the same holiday practiced by a prior culture of people who were later seen as not "getting it right" at best.

The replacement ritual didn't happen because the new viewpoint was an improvement—it was a dominating admonishment—a mono-focused judgment that the prior approach was evil or wrong.

The good news is that many old or original rituals and celebrations that were always good, not evil, have been revived, so we have choices. For the majority, because celebrations changed over time and locations, the origins of holidays are only sometimes understood, so today's society tends to flow with the mashup approach to holidays.

It seems to work out well enough.

Collectively, cultural celebrations show us much more about our similarities than our differences.

Learning more about people of other faiths or who live in other parts of the world and then recognizing those similarities is, not only fun and interesting, but it's also an enormously important piece of the peace puzzle.

Now, if only we can let go of the narcissist thinking that our way is the only way so that we can open the door to realizing that most ways are simply different roads to the same destination. Taking the time to listen to cultural stories and the reasons for their version of the celebration brings more understanding and compassion to this planet we share and call home.

My friend, colleague, and editor, Janis Hunt Johnson, wrote a terrific piece for Magellan TV called Spring Has Sprung: Celebrations Worldwide Are Unique, Yet Similar.

It's totally worth the read.