Questmass 101 - A Quest to Find Meaning in Christmas
A 101-Day Quest to Find Meaning in Christmas
What if the new year started on the first day of spring? And instead of Christmas being a super holiday of opulence and guilt, we celebrated four smaller holidays throughout the year around the times of soltice and equinox. Here is my calendar of such a year with new names for the months and seasons.
I came up with the idea for the project as a way to connect with my Mom and keep her mind stimulated. She is 84 and starting to have trouble forming new memories. My Mom has studied the Bible for over 70 years.
As a way of being mindful of time, I connect bibilcal passages to the natural environment.
These charts track my goal to do 2,015 pushups in 101 days. I also keep track of the phases of the moon. I used the Japanese names for days of the week as they are more connected to nature than the English names.
The days of the week are: Moon Day, Fire Day, Water Day, Tree Day, Gold Day, Soil Day and Sun Day.
Each petal represents a day, each flower a week. The top-most petal of the triangle is Christmas. I do different kinds of activities (design, feast, fast, pray, thank, and celebrate) during different times of the project. I refrained from sugars on red days.
While Christmas is often a time of over indulgence in food and sweets, I started my own tradition of eating less during the season and being grateful for the bounty of delicious and healthy food on my table.