AGARTALAITES SETTLE FOR AN IMPOVERISHED CHRISTMAS
By:J. Pulinthanath sdb, Category: General, Posted on:2010-12-21 09:30:05
DESPITE THE FERVOR AND RELIGIOSITY ONE SEES AT THE OCTOBER PUJAS IN AGARTALA, CHRISTMAS SHOWS ITS NO DIFFERENT FROM THE REST OF THE CITIES. WELCOME TO CHRISTMAS, THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD FESTIVAL OF THE MODERN TIMES!
An occasional Star, lonesome yet glowing atop some distant housetop, announces there isnt much of December left either. For most people here in Agartala its nothing more than a token reminder of what the town looked like during the pujas. With hardly two months gone, the memory of the glow, glitter and din in which the city got swathed in comes back to remind one how different, almost inadequate, Christmas here is.
Inadequate seems to be an accurate enough assessment, initially; but one soon realizes that even the lean Christmas of Agartala has a fat and fabulous side to it, thanks to the chameleon-like adeptness of some business firms to adapt their business techniques to pander to the seasonal urges of their gullible clients.
Christmas has become a season when profiteering hits new peak and assumes a variety of forms, each more comical than the other. There is a pastry shop in town that around Christmas-time gets crowded with numerous cheap models of what looks like aged asexual clowns dressed in red and sporting a white beard. To call them models of Santa Claus would be an affront to whoever Santa was or whatever he represented. Then we have confectionary shops that vie with each other in business but succeed only to churn out mediocre cakes that taste little better than sawdust mixed in sugar syrup that too at forbidding prices. As if Christmas is about all these or any of these!
And we do have an obliging cadre of youngish things hell bent on giving the mercantile class the time of their life whenever a festivals round the corner. Come the cover of the evening and this army - feeling uppity with jeans, bikes and a couple of mobile phones strut about showing their stuff and satiating the cravings of their palate mainly, but to the extent possible, that of the heart too. Lapping it all up perhaps gives them the feeling of being in sync with the phony neo-liberalism of capital city that lets one rev it up as long as its not 8 pm yet.
After all, its Christmas time!
I submit, this piece is neither about the timely tactics of pastry shop owners nor about their willing victims who, feeling very christmasy, gorge on overpriced victuals in city centers. This piece, very decidedly, wants to be about Christmas which is why we need to move on, although its exciting enough to tarry a while in these nether regions.
For many, Christmas has become synonymous with a gift-giving silly old man dressed like a clown. For this group, which includes many Christians as well, Christmas is about exchanging greetings, sharing cakes, illuminated trees, fireworks, new clothes, good food and lot of music merely.
This is Brand Christmas and it has takers galore. Its something that many are eager to promote especially those that see in it a huge business opportunity. This is a disturbing trend not only because business considerations should not be what drive Christmas but also because they are directly opposed to the meaning and significance of Christmas. This amoral, a-religious, and commercial Christmas has already seized the world with a frightening frenzy. Which is what makes Christmas perhaps the most misunderstood and disturbing festival in the calendar.
The disturbing factor is that the central figure of Christmas, Jesus, finds no room in the present-day celebrations of the festival.
Look at the hundreds of Christmas cards that flood the market this season. It is hard to find one that bears the picture of Jesus or the holy family. Why, some even omit Christ from the name Christmas and call it Xmas. Grotesque indeed!
What is Christmas then, really about?
The Scriptures say that the mother of Jesus gave birth to her child in a stable because there was no room for them at the inn. It is striking that even at the first Christmas Jesus found no room. Despite our Christmas getting bigger and louder and messier there is still no room. How curious that but we do not let its central figure, Jesus the Lord, be a part of it! How less intelligible and more meaningless can our celebrations get!
Perhaps, it isnt as meaningless as it first appears. And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. This birth in a manger declares that Jesus wants to be counted among the poorest, among the most humble; he will be found among the disinherited, the sick, the prisoners, the sinners.
The Christmas stable is a symbol of all kinds of pain, suffering and rejection found in this world. On the one hand, there are those that overindulge in wealth, power, luxury and pleasure; and on the other hand, those that suffer due to hunger, cold, lack of shelter, security and excessive oppression. By choosing to be born amidst the lowly animals of the stable Jesus was making it eloquently known that he was with the latter group.
Throughout his life, until his death on the cross, Jesus remained on the side of the poor, the rejected and the abandoned. That was his way of gifting to the world a new Way, one that we, believers and others alike, have not understood or tried out fully, even to this day.
Christmas needs to be reclaimed from those who have hijacked it and turned it into a hedonistic carnival and a grand business strategy.
Perhaps there is no need to reclaim it at all for however much one may try to christen these money-spinning and grotesque motions, Christmas, it shall not be so. For two thousand years, the miracle of the real Christmas has skirted the caricature and happened in some place else, at times close by, at times far away but always, in the midst of want, pain, and rejection. It still continues to happen among lowly and inconsequential people whose only boast is their nothingness and absolute dependence on God.
Thats what most of us are, when shorn of the veneer of self-importance and distraction that envelopes us in our unthinking moments. We are not only vulnerable and fragile, but most often broken, and having no one else to turn to, except God Himself. Our mirth and laughter is underpinned by sorrow and pain and despite the thousand connections we seem to have and cultivate there is a loneliness thats gnawing at our insides.
In other words, how exhilaratingly close we are to the miracle that can change it all? Then why fritter away the moment at shopping malls and pastry shops?
A truly wondrous Christmas to you all!
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