Is it appropriate for non-Christians to participate in and celebrate the "Christmas experience" if they so desire - even if they don't share the same belief system as Christians?
If you open your mind wide enough.....you may discover a way of looking that embraces the possibility of inclusion, rather than exclusion, of all who wish to participate and celebrate with you.
The Buddha made a distinction between ultimate truth and conventional truth.
The idea of a self is merely a concept, a convention. To understand not-self, you have to meditate. If you only intellectualize, your head will explode. When you see beyond self, you no longer cling to happiness, and when you no longer cling to happiness, you can begin to be truly happy.The language of the Dhamma is the same for all people - the language of experience.
There is a great difference between concepts and direct experience.
Whosoever puts a finger into a glass of hot water will have the same experience of ‘hot’ but it is called by many words in different languages.
In the Christian religion, for example, one of the most important holidays is Christmas. If Christmas is an occasion where people make a particular effort to do what is good and kind and helpful to others in some way, that's important and wonderful, no matter what system you use to describe it.
I teach this way to enable people to let go of their attachments to various concepts and to see what is happening in a straightforward and natural way.
Anything that inspires us to see what is true and do what is good is proper practice.
You may call it anything you like.
Greed and hatred are the same in an Eastern or a Western mind. Suffering and the cessation of suffering are the same for all people.
Taken from the following source:
http://www.purifymind.com/DiscoursesChah.htm
