MOST OF US will be hurtling about town today, desperately hunting down last-minute Christmas presents and raiding supermarket shelves for a weekend of gargantuan celebration.
Most of us will have overspent, getting exhausted and stressed in the process.
Tomorrow we may realise that we have bought inappropriate presents. We may then spend the day with relatives we get on so well with that we only see them once a year and only after high-octane arguments with our spouse.
To console ourselves, we will eat too much and drink too much, passing out into an exhausted stupor until the early hours, when we are awakened by the weight of souvla and in the furthest recess in our stomach, the cold sweat and pulsating alcoholic headache that heralds a painful day ahead.
Was it all worth it? Especially when you look back on the past two months of reeking commercialism, the invasion of Santas and reindeers that pressed upon us when we were still in short sleeves with the air conditioning switched on; when you think of the saturation of mind-numbing jingling adverts, seeking to plunge us into a commercial overdose.
Sure, the children will enjoy it: the wide-eyed wonder at the magical twinkling lights, the excitement, the shredding of wrapping paper from a mountain of gifts. These are memories we all grow up to cherish, though one wonders if the excitement would not be that much more acute if the build-up were shorter and therefore more intense.
But what about the adults? The Christmas message is one of hope, humility and kindness. Even if we are not believers, it should at least be cherished as a time of harmony, human warmth and well-earned rest. Yet all of these are drowned in the lives we lead, crushed under the weight of social expectation. A time of giving has too often become mangled into a time of obscene spending, a time of celebration transformed into a gluttony of excess.
So perhaps in our last-minute frenzy we should find a moment to pause and reflect on what it’s all about, to remember that in giving we should also be giving of ourselves to those we love (and even those we don’t love all that much). Perhaps it’s more important to spend an extra hour with the kids than it is to prepare that sixteenth dish for the Christmas buffet. And perhaps we can try for one day to forget how annoying we find our uncle once removed, and see him as a fellow human being, as vulnerable and worthy as the rest of us.
Merry Christmas.
