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Here’s the Season to be Jolly fa la la la la la la la la… and jolly it has been indeed. Everything about this season is magical. The crisp and clear weather, the happiness that comes with celebration, the joy of giving and receiving, the togetherness we share with family and friends and the feeling of completeness that comes as the year ends and we are in the brink of an all new and exciting year. There is this all out feeling of happiness, a happiness that would really be a gift if allowed to reside within us all year through.
As this season approaches, each one, in their own way, prepares themselves for it. The season of Christmas is a happy and joyous one that heralds in the spirit that fills the air. Over the years, there have been people and institutions that have tried and till very recently failed to change the whole meaning of the season. Now however, some of us have allowed it to transform into the ‘winter holiday’. For the sake of peace and to avoid causing hurt to sentiments, some countries have decided to switch up what the festival is called. These countries have also called upon other countries to follow suit. Luckily, many have not obliged and the festival has remained ‘Christmas’ at least for this year. The right to celebrate the joy of the birth of Jesus Christ is being taken away and we need not stand around letting it happen. That tiny bit of negativity aside, let us focus on the positivity that this season brings.
Christmas time is a time we all, irrespective of religion, caste and creed, celebrate uninhibited. The most special lesson I have learnt, I have learnt from children. It is the innocence of childhood from which we adults can actually learn the true meaning of life and it is exactly an experience I had with a student a few years ago that put things in perspective for me.
I stood by watching as a few of my students practiced hard to perform their carols on stage and there was this one particular little girl who was relentlessly trying to remember the lyrics. She came up to me and asked if I could help. She said to me with her doe eyed expression ‘Ma’am explain this to me so I can learn it well.’ The carol was ‘A long time ago in Bethlehem’, so with as much passion as I could I explained the lyrics to this tiny little Hindu girl. She smiled, thanked me and walked away. A few days later, she came to me to explain what she had been up to. She wanted to know more she said. So she went home and asked around and found herself a book she could read about the true meaning of Christmas. At this time I was a little weary, seeing from various angles how this could blow up. I had also received a call from her parents asking for a meeting with me and I was pretty sure they weren’t happy that their little girl was spending so much time seeking answers to questions they would not find appropriate being from another religion. The meeting began as I had expected. The parent with a bewildered look meekly said how they we shocked and surprised by the amount of questions she asked them about Christmas and how they were afraid they didn’t have the right answers. It was the next line that sent shivers down my spine in the most wonderful way. They told me that they had asked a few of their Catholic friends about Christmas and from what they had heard, they truly wanted their daughter to celebrate it the way it ought to be. The idea, which they wanted to run past me was, they make their daughter write a list to Santa of what she would like to have this Christmas, and then they would buy those gifts in multiples of 5 and take her to an orphanage on Christmas day where she could distribute them to those less fortunate, but the best part of their narration came from the last line they uttered. ‘Ma’am we don’t really know, this is all her idea’.
The purity of a child, it is the way they think, the unbridled beliefs in the magical bounty of love and their whole-hearted acceptance of everyone that truly speaks of the wonders of Christmas. As adults, the lessons we can learn from those little angels we have around are plentiful. A child taught me the true meaning of Christmas and in essence the true meaning of love. To all our readers I would like to wish you whole-heartedly, compliments of this beautiful season and may you open your heart the way a child would and share your joy…
