CHRISTMAS IS A SEASON NOT ONLY FOR REJOICING, BUT FOR REFLECTION’

                                                                                                – Winston Churchill

Christmas is again rushing up fast, heralding that time of year to review all that has gone before, and what is to come. A time to reflect about the meaning of this period, particularly what happened on that day a long time ago.

It’s a time when family and friends come together and have a festive and merry time. But Christmas is also for contemplating the Christmas spirit, one of giving and forgiving, a time when the love of our fellow men should prevail over hatred, bitterness and greed.

However, if the average person was asked to reflect about the essence of Christmas, there well may be an absence of these deeper thoughts. Answers may surface relating to gifts, parties, shopping, getting drunk at the office party, seeing family, the joy of going away on holidays, a break from a tedious tense job.

In today’s busy world, it’s easy to lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas. Amidst the food and drink, friends & family, how much time have we left to be more humane and kind, considering those not as fortunate as ourselves, that is the unloved, unwashed and unwanted.

Is today’s Christmas season a time of doing not thinking? Are we preoccupied with lists of presents, choosing a suitable one for ninety five year old aunt Maud, puzzling what to give a ten year old as a Kris Kringle, fuming at having to give a present to a foul mouthed uncouth in-law, toting up the massive entertaining costs, trying to find a reasonably priced gluten free plum pudding.

This is not the end. We then have to buy all this stuff. Impatiently searching for a scarce parking space, running from shop to shop, maxing out the credit card, despairing when we can’t find the present our beloved spouse really wants, being furious at missing the free two hour parking period by one minute. And so on and so forth, it’s madness with no time for quiet reflection, it’s simply survival.

Our kids do have a ball, they get lots of presents and junk food, see their cousins. Some even get carted off to see the Myer windows. But are they thinking anything spiritual? Of course not, it’s all about toys and a cool dude in a red suit. To quote one little tacker. “I learned in Sunday school today all about the very first Christmas. You see, there wasn’t a Santa way back then, so these three skinny guys on camels had to deliver all the toys! And Rudolph the reindeer with his nose so bright wasn’t there yet, so they had to have this big spotlight in the sky to find their way around.”

Yep folks, it’s all about the money. Christmas is way too commercialized. The true purpose of the holiday, once termed a holy day, has been lost. It’s crazy and crass. Any deep reflections of business are how to sneakily expand the shopping season. One study calculated that a quarter of all personal spending takes place during the Christmas shopping season.

What about when it’s finished, can we relax? No we can’t, there’s still a final task. We need to deal with the unwanted carelessly given gifts, which are returned, sold, or re-gifted. In one survey, 15% of respondents were unhappy about their gifts, 10% could not remember what they had received, 25% five percent said they had re-gifted their presents, 14% sold the items, 10% tried to return them to the store, and 5% returned the gift to the giver.

But there’s more. We spend weeks stuffing wrapping paper, packages, bottles and cans into our garbage bins. We clean up the house, scraping food muck from the grandkids off the tiles, cursing the wretched child who vomited their fourth helping of pudding over the carpet, also the same about drunken old uncle Bill who spilt a bottle of port over the rug, wishing we could thump the cousin who fired a nerf bullet into our kid’s eye, while the stupid parents simply looked on. Then we again climb in the car and go to the New Year’s sales to repeat this process.

I leave you to reflect on these reflections.

Merry Christmas.