mountains of rich food, and heaving huge trees inside the house to festoon with sparkly decorations, it is all too easy to lose sight of why families gather to celebrate the festival of Christmas.

Recognising that for some people Christmas is actually a time of acute unhappiness and possibly for many more, a time that conjures feelings of vague discontent and disappointment, Dr. Antonio Santos and Dr. Stephanie Hancox are holding two special workshops on The Meaning of Christmas.

The two clinical psychologists believe that spirituality is at the heart of psychology and base much of their work in treating patients on the philosophy of the international best-seller "A Course in Miracles''.

"These workshops will help people to find inner peace, to teach a thought system that will help remove the blocks that prevent us from finding that peace. Mind blocks are produced by our `wrong' minds and are responsible for those attack thoughts that produce feelings of guilt, fear, anxiety, depression, jealousy -- all those bad, negative things,'' says Dr. Santos.

Explaining that the mind is split in two -- "what we call our `right mind' and our `wrong minds','' he says their course is designed to change the mind and the lens through which various perceptions arise and evolve.

Christmas, says Dr. Hancox, can become a minefield of negative thoughts, dealing as it does with both relationships and materialism. These both come together in the sometimes vexed questions surrounding Christmas presents.

"The psychology behind the giving and receiving of gifts covers many aspects.

There's certainly nothing wrong in giving a gift -- what may be wrong is the mind in which it's given,''notes Dr. Hancox. "If it's done with a sense of sacrifice, spending money you can't really afford, it is a sign that your `wrong' mind is operating. It may be an effort to get someone to like you, admire you, to forgive you, or to have someone in your debt.'' "One of the realities about gift-giving,'' agrees Dr. Santos, "is that most are given out of a feeling of guilt. We haven't made time for our wife or our child, so we buy a fancy gift because we feel guilty about the relationship.

Or an expensive gift might keep a bad relationship at bay. We might beat the wife, or verbally abuse her every day, but if we buy her a great big diamond ring, it will make things better. Or, conversely, we may withhold a gift as an act of punishment or vengeance.'' Frequently, says Dr. Hancox, gifts are more about control than the simple act of giving: "An over-protective mother, for instance, may buy her son a bike when the big sixteenth birthday arrives. She pays a couple of thousand dollars without asking the child to contribute anything and then she goes off and insures it and doing all the leg work, so what she is doing is giving the child a double message. She is saying `I'll give you the bike but I'll sort out all the legalities because you're not responsible enough to do it'. And what happens? On the big day, the kid drinks too much, crashes the bike and poor old mom and dad pay the bill, probably muttering all the while that he's still a kid ... Or they might simply buy this hugely expensive bike because they know, in their hearts, that they don't spend enough time with the child.

"In our business,'' she adds with a rueful smile, "we have many people seeking our services because basically, they've not spent time with mom and dad. They have certainly not lacked material things, but are totally deprived in terms of relationships.'' Other areas of conflict in gift-giving may centre around the idea of giving a present merely to ensure receiving one in return, giving a very expensive gift to hammer home the concept of superiority, or the `good old guy' who gives money away to strangers when his own family has to go without. "And,'' says Dr. Santos, "there are the siblings who attach a lot of significance to the cost of gifts and compare them. Our workshops ask us to question these behavioural assumptions. Just as we may think we can buy our way into peoples' hearts, we may think we can buy our way into heaven. But the truth is that we make our own heaven and our own hell in our own minds. A Course in Miracles reminds us that we can use our minds to make good choices, the right choices.'' "We have lost the real meaning of Christmas through the ascendancy of our `wrong' minds,'' says Dr. Hancox. "It has become something unobtainable, expectations are rarely met. As it's unobtainable we want to destroy it -- which we have virtually done with all the crass commercialism. We have this big family reunion and what happens? People drink too much, fights erupt, and what was supposed to be a celebration becomes more of a war! On a deeper level,'' she adds, "the message is that we will never be like Christ. Our wrong mind subtly reinforces the idea that we are guilty and can never even regain our innocence -- hence the hankering back to the perfect Christmases of childhood. We indulge in drunken and aggressive behaviour to block out inner conflict, those feelings of lost innocence, so that we are no longer able to see the truth of who we really are.'' Through studying "A Course in Miracles'' says Dr. Santos, Christmas is seen for what it really is -- the birth of the real self. The symbol of the birth of Jesus may be used as a symbol for the rebirth of inner peace, of knowing ourselves. The course shows how we can recover the memory of ourselves, removing the veils, as it were, so that we can become peaceful and make good life choices by using the "right'', rather than the "wrong'' mind.

Noting human nature could be described as "the wrong mind thought system'', Dr. Hancox says the workshops will explore the assumptions and beliefs which, in many cases, are accepted without question.

Peace of mind From Page 1 "We will explore more in depth what it really means to be born in this world and what is the nature of life in this world.'' Pointing out that the present doesn't exist within the wrong mind, Dr. Hancox says the workshops will also explore the effect of nostalgia on our lives.

"When we spend a lot of time thinking about the past we are making up for the misery of the future -- we yearn back to a golden time and we romanticise our past. So one of the things we do in our work, is to clear this kind of clutter from our minds. And I would like to point out that, whether we are Christians or not, we have all been affected by the mega-blitz of the predominant holiday celebration in the West. So, in one way or another, we all have to deal with the problems that arise. Although `A Course in Miracles' is written in the language of western Christianity, it certainly doesn't preclude non-Christians from benefiting from our workshops -- you can substitute Buddha, Allah, or God as love, perfection, unity and oneness. If some people are turned off by the idea of any religion, it doesn't mean that the concepts are not applicable. In straight psychological terms. we are talking about choices that we make inside of ourselves.'' Dr. Santos speaks of Victor Frankel, a German jew who was a psychiatrist. "He survived Auschwitz and he came to realise that there were people, himself included, who could survive the most terrible things because he had acquired inner peace. We are seduced into thinking our surroundings make us happy or unhappy -- but a luxurious house doesn't make us feel any better living in that house unless we are at peace with ourselves.'' Christmas can be a very difficult time for the recovering alcoholic or drug addict. Even infrequent drinkers usually have plenty of alcohol on hand for the festive season and in Bermuda, an invitation to have a drink almost always means "have an alcoholic drink''.

"The drinker uses alcohol as a balm, to self-medicate and numb feelings of inadequacy, disappointment and so on. What the recovering alcoholic or addict has to try and bear in mind is that it's our ego thought system, or wrong mind, that gives us those brief moments of pleasure -- it's like the first puff of a cigarette, the first glass of wine -- but that rush of well-being is very short-lived! For the drinker, numbing feelings means you don't have to deal with them, but as the drinking gets more and more out of control, the numbness turns to depression because alcohol is a depressant and, in the end, the pain is still there. Alcohol eventually just reinforces the feeling of pain.

"But the alcoholic or addict can give himself a Christmas present this year by reaching out to deal with pain in a different way. By recognising what is going on in his mind, he can make another choice. People so often forget that they do have the resources to deal with bad situations, they forget that they have choices so the gift is being able to make that choice. At our workshops, we will help people to realise, first of all, that they have these blocks, and then how to remove them so that we can spend far less time in our wrong minds, and most of it, happily and productively, in our right minds.'' "A Course in Miracles: Rediscover the Meaning of Christmas'' will be presented by Dr. Antonio Santos and Dr. Stephanie Hancox on Friday, December 13 from 7 to 9 p.m. and on Saturday, December 14 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Integral Yoga Centre, 14 Victoria Street, Hamilton.

Telephone Ashton Associates at 295-0999 for further details. The cost is $200 per couple, or $120 per person. Advance registration is requested since space is limited.