At Christmas, you have to be happy, attractive, successful and bring family and friends together whilst someone plays a carol on the piano.  It’s the biggest financial and emotional investment of the year.

At Christmas, you have to be happy, attractive, successful and bring family and friends together whilst someone plays a carol on the piano.  It’s the biggest financial and emotional investment of the year. You’ll go to dozens of dinners and feasts, but at this time of year, only Father Christmas can put on weight. Oh Christmas, the time when the gap between what you want, what you can do and what you should do becomes appallingly wide. If Jesus were to be born again on Christmas Eve, he would be against this materialism, where we end up losing sight of what’s most important: practising honesty, peace and love. Artiem Fresh People, as experts in SLOW culture, draws a parallel between the teachings of Jesus, whether or not we are religious, and the philosophy of #Mindfulness: we’re putting the Fresh spirit into this #Christmas and for as long as it lasts!

  1. Treat others as you wish to be treated.
  2. Don’t judge unless you want to be judged.
  3. Forgive and love your enemies: ‘If you love only those who love you, what reward have you? And if you only do good to those who do good to you, what are you doing more than others?’
  4. Foster peace and calm: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’.
  5. Foster humility: ‘All who exalt themselves shall be humbled, and all who humble themselves shall be exalted’.
  6. Use the right words: ‘It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man’.
  7. Nurture ourselves: ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’.
  8. Give and receive: ‘There is more happiness in giving than in receiving’.
  9. Ask, seek, knock: ‘For everyone who asks, receives; the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door shall be opened’.
  10. Live for the NOW. Mindfulness. Don’t worry about tomorrow: ‘tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own’.
  11. Stay curious, open to learning and changing your mind: ‘The truth shall set you free’.
  12. Be compassionate. ‘Let he who is free from sin cast the first stone’.
  13. Feed your soul and avoid gluttony and excess: ‘Man does not live by bread alone’.
  14. Overcome laziness; foster diligence, hard work and being useful to our community: ‘By their fruits you shall know them’.

Do not criticise: ‘Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the great log in your own?’