Dear Updating Aphrodite,
“The holidays are here and I’m dreading them. I’m depressed thinking about all the gift shopping and wrapping I have to do, and the endless socializing with co-workers, friends and family. I don’t want to sound like a Scrooge, but there it is. Bah, humbug. Do you have any Aphroditic aphorisms to help me through to the New Year?”
 – DOWN IN DECEMBER

Dear "DOWN IN DECEMBER,"

Admire beauty. Laugh a lot (December is just 31 days). A rose is a rose is a rose. Meditate on a red one each day of the month. Receive as much as you give. (How’s that for a few instant aphorisms?)

Okay, enough pithiness. Let’s get to the heart of your important question with some details. Ginette Paris, in Pagan Meditations, suggests that just as we recognize the link between pleasure, beauty, and spirituality,"…it’s easy to see the sequence which leads from ugliness to depression" (31).

Perhaps you’ve been overwhelmed with Ugliness--a result of holiday stress -- from Decembers past. No wonder you feel like Scrooge!

It’s time to incorporate Beauty into your holiday plans. Mix things that please you into your December days—find things you like to look at, things you deem aesthetically pleasing, and make time to enjoy them!

Aphrodite loved to laugh. Read the comics in the newspaper or the cartoons in The New Yorker. Don’t delete Internet joke forwards; scan a few. Laugh out loud several times a day--even if you feel silly doing it.

Buy a rose, Aphrodite’s flower, and spend fifteen minutes daily meditating in front of it as it unfolds. In the winter especially, a rose meditation can be an amazing way to get in touch with beauty. Seeing a rose open up slowly encourages openings in our own souls. A rose reminds us of the spring that is to come, the eternal regeneration that’s part of Aphrodite’s domain. As John Sanford says in Fate, Love and Ecstasy: Wisdom from the Lesser-Known Goddesses of the Greeks:

"…It was Aphrodite who caused the flowers to bloom and the fruit to ripen. For this reason, gardens and flowers were sacred to the Goddess—especially the rose, which, with its deep colors and voluptuous, inviting blossoms, was regarded as a holy and unique expression of the essence of the goddess of love herself"(8).

Perhaps you’re too focused on the "giving" aspect of the holidays and not enough on the "receiving." Allow others to give to you. They will if you let them--and if you allow yourself to be open to it. Aphrodite was very interested in receiving things, especially pleasure. Getting in touch with the joy of receiving will recharge you. You'll experience a different sort of energy; you can look forward to social situations instead of dreading them.

Try some of these suggestions. Hang out with Aphrodite over the holidays.

- Laura Annawyn Shamas, Ph.D.

WORKS CITED

Paris, Ginette. Pagan Meditations. Trans. Gwendolyn Moore. Woodstock, CT: Spring, 1986.

Sanford, John. Fate, Love, and Ecstasy: Wisdom from the Lesser-Known Goddesses of the Greeks. Wilmette, IL: Chiron, 1995.

Originally published in “Updating Aphrodite,” on HeadlineMuse.com, Dec. 2000,
http://www.headlinemuse.com/aphroadvice/decaphro.htm

© COPYRIGHT 2000 by Laura Annawyn Shamas

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Myth*ing Links
Reprinted with permission for Myth*ing Links' Yuletide page:
Winter Greetings and Lore
31 December 2008