Or What Some People Do With `The Season’
(A few reflections today)
No I don’t want to, nor can I ever, put any damper on this wonderful, now all-pervasive festival of celebration of the Christ-Child’s Birth.
However, there are often negative, unnecessary or unwelcome elements to any worthy celebration – religious or national. Unwittingly, or with purposeful selfishness or mischief, there are those who would distort, extort, subvert or “de-stabilise” any observance or celebration for their own ends. Whether Phagwah, Eid, Easter, Mashramani or Christmas, these national observances are too often mis-used. Look what they’ve done to Christmas!
I have, over the last decade and a half, lamented the local “fast-forwarding” of Christmas by the commercial interests in our midst. Okay I concede two points on that issue: all of us, business persons or not, should plan early for an event; forward-planning is vital to successful management and eventual success. Secondly, I appreciate that the nation’s business people are free to target the end-of-year December festival and market to make some money and profits they probably missed out on, throughout the financial, economically-challenged year.
My grouse is with the rabid manipulation of the Nativity; the exploitation of believers’ love for their Faith, replete with its mysteries and miracles, including the Virgin Birth by Immaculate Conception. Grossly, with mercenary zeal and devil dealing profiteering, the business interest bring forward Christmas’s beginning to October – November these days. Shrewd, clever advertising entice both rich and needy with countless promotions and “offers” for the “Season” of “Giveaways” and eternal hope. Hype and hypocrisy subvert the Real Reason for the Season and its religious base. Surely both the Christ-Child and the adult Jesus would not have approved the commercialism practised in His Holy Name.
Commerce, Christ and Christmas
This is how I put it a few years ago: Commercialism and rampant consumerism make sure that every segment of society succumbs to spending sprees and extravagance that could be inimical to their financial health for the rest of New Year. The reason for the season is sidelined, relegated to second or third place with only the devoted seniors going to Church to worship.
Don’t get me too wrong. I too love the season for both the symbolism and the practices of gift-giving. I understand that Christmas holds that “the Word – God – was made flesh” to dwell amongst us. The Baby Jesus – obviously a Brown Bundle of joy and wonder – was born to a young virgin and her matured Carpenter Gentleman friend. It has been long agreed that the Divine birth could not have really happened in cold December. But it is the spirit of hope and prosperity fulfilled, rather than time or place which moves believers and others. Who can trivialize the human spirit?
Religion – or social persuasion – drives even the poor to purchase, to clean up, to renovate, to rejuvenate the premises and the mind Wonderful season. Even I like to clear up, spruce up, and usher in the new. It’s the Spirit, darn it!
Never-the-less, purely in the “spirit” of caution, I urge you all- parents, relatives, friends – not to go overboard in terms of unnecessary extravagance. Watch the hire purchases and the advertising blitzes. Be prudent”.
One man’s extreme views
Indeed, years ago too, I was attracted to the harsh denunciation written by one Amar Panday who debunked the extravagance, especially amongst the poorer “Believers”.
Wrote the aggrieved gentleman: “Christmas in Guyana has been the grandest instrument of an excessive consumerism where our people are psychologically cajoled and lured into unfettered spending, spending; that is, in the context of a poor country, a drainage of scarce resources.
Spending that breaches the inclination to frugality that is supposed to be the foundation of our economic lift. Spending that in no small way contributes towards the perpetuation of that vicious cycle of poverty in our country. To tangibly demonstrate the reality of this is not very difficult. Savings that could have been put to entrepreneurial use with long-lasting economic reward are frittered away with religious fervour. Parents who deprived their children of text books and additional reading material suddenly plunge into a spending spree. I have often wondered why so much has been historically expended in the strange ritualistic importation of “ice“ apples, grapes, Christmas trees and the whole assortment of Santa Claus paraphernalia. What part of Christianity stipulates this?
From the serious to the ridiculous?
I conclude this rather “downside” reflection of Christmas by sharing —-FUNNY FACTS ABOUT CHRISTMAS with you… then a local magistrate’s admonition.
I repeat that there is solid and evidence that the Savior/Child was not actually born during the month we know as December; that period was chosen, rather arbitrarily, by the European Christian hierarchy in the fourth century, some three hundred and twenty-five years after the birth – to a young, young lady and a old matured carpenter – of the baby called Jesus; the term “Christmas” comes from the old Christe Maesse which is supposed to mean, literally, the celebration of the birthday of Christ. Not so, say my researchers. By most historical indications, Jesus, the little brown-skinned baby was born under poverty-stricken circumstances, lived and was lynched on a cross for fighting the White Romans for the liberation of the oppressed darker-skinned masses. So cogitate on the significance of the Birth that changed the world. Even as you contemplate the trappings that so powerfully inform the spirit and the consequent celebrations called Christmas.
One lighter note: what happens when the “n” is removed from the middle of the word ”Santa” and placed instead at the end?
And England passed a law in 1656 abolishing festivals known as HOLLY DAYS. The law, in effect, was against CHRISTMAS DAY. And that law was passed on Christmas Day! Of course, most customs now associated with Christmas were never Christian customs, but Pagan behaviours which existed long before Christ’s Birth.
Two words, WHITE CHRISTMAS, describe the most popular holiday song there is. But what does that have to do with us in sunny, rainy Guyana? The fact that more of us Guyanese live in snow-friendly countries, than live within our own borders? Perhaps.
And our local magistrate, Hazel Octive-Hamilton, probably knows that Easter and its Resurrection is much older than the Christmas observance. Two Wednesdays ago she rebuked a defence attorney who sought sympathy for his client, an alleged bandit-robber. Said she: “This is a Court of Law. Christmas is just a holiday for all of us. I’m a magistrate. Don’t talk to me about Christmas!”
Oh, the glorious spirit!
Despite all, all of the foregoing, I am intrigued by the all-pervading SPIRIT of the Christmas Festival. It awakens renewal and the best charity within us. It kindles love and hope amongst the poorest.
It surely has divine foundations, stripped of even some Biblical facts that are questionable. I LIKE CHRISTMAS, BUT REFLECT AND DISCUSS. Merry Christmas 2008!