All we want for Christmas

Peter O'Connor writes a weekly column for the Newsday. 

What might be on your Christmas list this year? For giving, and for receiving? Lots of lovely gifts, of course, things you would like to give to all your special people in your life, if only you could afford to do this.

Christmas has become so much more than a religious event for Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ and the founding of one of mankind’s great religions. The event has been embraced by non-religious people, and even people of other faiths, via the fantasies created around Christmas time, but which have nothing to do with the Advent. Christians and non-Christians alike decorate their homes with lights and images of a fat man in a red suit being towed through the sky in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer led by one with a bright red nose!

The sleigh is filled with gifts, and the man in the red suit, Santa Claus, allegedly visits every home on Christmas night to deliver these to children everywhere.

This far-fetched fairytale is better known by most children, including Christian children, than is the legend of the Nativity, where the birth of Jesus Christ is described in the Holy Bible.

But the fairytale is easier for our children to embrace than is the idea of a child being born to “save the world” in a humble manger, surrounded by animals, rather than in a gleaming hospital setting. It is said that three wise men, kings apparently, had followed a very bright star in the sky to find the newborn Jesus, and present him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We are not told whatever became of these gifts, or what happened to the three kings. But the symbolism of these gifts, and the sharing of gifts at Christmas, has remained with us ever since.

So we wish for gifts at Christmas, and we seek the right gifts to share with our loved ones. But what might we receive this year, and of course, what should we give, or at least wish for our families and friends? And must our gifts be tangible? Things you can see, touch and hold? Or can you give, or at least wish to give, or receive, intangible blessings like love, and hope, and peace?

I would like to wish everyone peace this Christmas. Peace within our families and homes, especially homes and families under stress. Peace within our communities, where crime and violence are now rampant. Peace in our country, where opposing factions, whether political or economic, can find a path to walk together for the benefit of us all. And of course, but hardly likely, peace in the world, a world wracked by war and injustice, and still seeking to wage more wars to end the current ones.

And while there is not anything that most of us can do about the wars and attendant horrors across our world, each of us can work for peace within our family, and indeed within our neighbourhoods. So do this if you can, dear readers, seek to build strength within your families and let that flow out into your communities. We will all need the love and strength in our communities in the year ahead.

And what about prosperity? We share our wishes for “peace and prosperity” quite casually each year, but how many wishes for prosperity are ever granted, or fulfilled?

Let us accept, that except for a very few, pecuniary prosperity will not enter our lives this Christmas, so I will not cast that vain hope upon us. But if we all accept that prosperity is not going to arrive in Santa’s sleigh, and that we must therefore all redouble our efforts at meeting our various responsibilities, and continue in this direction, then our first tenuous steps towards better lives can become a resounding march towards increased prosperity for all.

We express the wish for joy at Christmas too. But joy over gifts received is often countered by the sorrow of those, especially children, who, for whatever reasons, received no gifts. There is also joy in the abstract, the pleasure of families gathering to reunite and to feast together. In our family, as long as I can remember, we drank a Christmas toast to “absent friends,” family and close friends who could not join us on Christmas Day. This ritual is now softened somewhat by the advent of Skype, through which we can visit our families’ homes in far-off lands, even as we celebrate in our homes.

As I write this, from a misty forest dawn in Brasso Seco, far from the hustle and noise of the outside world, I wish you all peace in your homes, the prosperity of having loved ones, and the joy of appreciating what we have.

So have a Christmas with family, friends and love!

Comments

"All we want for Christmas"

More in this section