SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS!
By Dr. Tilak S. Fernando
Picture Credit: Google.
The year 2017 has been on a roller
coaster ride, where the ordinary folk on it have been screaming each time there
was a bump on the ride, while a few selected privileged ones have been throwing
their hands up and enjoying the ride. At the end of yet another year, there
comes Christmas, either to celebrate or follow Jesus Christ's advice, which is 'not to concentrate only on
amassing wealth, but to understand that all evil things come from within the
man's heart to defile him, unless the heart is pure and the mind is cleansed'
(Mark 7:21-23).
On this special day of Christmas,
everyone, particularly the Christians, should reflect on the concerns what
Jesus Christ really expected of man. It is a travesty to see how Christmas has
been allowed to transform into a high-priced occasion, where both religion and
man have been engrossed, possessed, and conditioned by commerce. Christmas, of
course, comes but once a year, where mortals declare year on year, especially
during mid-night Christmas Mass, never to get bogged down in commercial hype
that has become like a contagious disease during this 'festive' season. This
becomes evidently clear with the congested traffic on the roads, despite
schoolchildren enjoying their break, and supermarkets becoming chockablock with
crowds, as if the world is going to end! This merriment is not confined only to
Christians, but people of all faiths, who automatically get sucked into this
celebration.
London Scene
In London, for example,
Christmas is celebrated in style, where every household, irrespective of their
religious faith, gets into the festive mood with decorations and a compulsory
Christmas tree adorned with tinsels, beginning December and lasting seven days
after the Christmas. Another 'show-off' is to display the number of Christmas
cards one receives, as a means of exhibiting their circle of friends! Parents,
with small children, begin to act like babies by playing alongside kids on
Christmas day. Streets, especially the Oxford Street, the international
shopping hub, gets illuminated with scores of electric bulbs, akin to Vesak
celebrations in Sri Lanka, spreading its splendour.
Christmas day was universally
accepted by the end of 4th century. Ever since, young children have been
conditioned to believe in the ' jolly
old man', called Father Christmas, with white whiskers, wearing a red
robe, and a large sack containing gifts, visiting at midnight through the roof
or chimney. The term 'Father
Christmas' has originated
from St. Nicholas, the Patron Saint of schoolchildren and sail centuries, after
the death of Jesus. During the 17th century, Dutch Protestant settlers in New
Amsterdam (New York) replaced St. Nicholas (Sinterklaas) with the generous magician called Santa Claus.
Commercial Hype
During this commercial hype,
businessmen concentrate on electronic contraptions and greeting cards, to boost
their economy. Women, who are concerned with their curves and sagging muscles,
become ready to say to 'hell
with it' and binge. At no
other time during the year, hypocrisy is so rampant, when people buy presents
and send Christmas cards; even to immediate neighbours they see day in and out,
throughout the year.
Sir Henry and John Horsley
designed the first Christmas card that had three panels, the outer two panels
displayed people caring for the poor, and in the centre with a family enjoying
a Christmas lunch. Modern methods of pictures, jokes or romantic scenes of life
have superseded this tradition. Today entrepreneurs produce millions of
Christmas cards by which their revenue too increases proportionately. Felling
down of Christmas trees, each year for the production of Christmas cards and
decorations, does irreparable harm to the environment. Mince pie is regarded as
a part of the British culture for hundreds of years with Christmas lunch. It is
recorded already that over £4 million (Rs. 800,000,000) worth of mince pies,
along with £1M (Rs 200,000,000) million Christmas
puddings have sold so far for 2017 Christmas in the UK.
Guideline
Jesus, born as an ordinary
man, led a simple life by travelling without paying any heed to accumulating
wealth. Despite his teachings of kindness and forbearance, what we see today,
as the world advances, is humans being taken over by evil forces. This
indicates a positively chaotic condition, and probably heading towards the
World War III, considering how the Americans and Israelis on one side, and
North Korea on the other, clash over Jerusalem and nuclear weapons
respectively, to light the torch of disaster, which simply boils down to
thinning out the mist on war front in the horizon.
Due to man's unreliable
behaviour, natural disasters such as temperatures getting into sub-zero levels,
earthquakes, floods and unimaginable droughts and tsunamis are becoming a common
occurrence; big cities such as Los Angeles, have begun to burn like hell fire,
which are all indicators to world leaders and rulers as a dire warning.
If one were to examine and
celebrate Jesus Christ's 'birthday,' under the spiritual microscope, then one
should be able to identify one's weaknesses and learn to be 'reborn' with new
resolutions of becoming a better individual. Christ demonstrated how to be
tolerant, even during his traumatic moments on the cross by loving and
forgiving the very people who sentenced him to death. Therefore, enjoyment
during Christmas should not be to make it a commercial fun-fare or kill pigs
and disembowel chicken, but to decorate people's hearts with love, compassion
and human feeling for one another, by which at least we, as human beings, might
be able to ward off some of the worst impending disasters that are predicted to
affect the world in the near future.
2017 - Ceylon Today - Saturday Column