‘Tis the season for the folly
IT wasn’t the Grinch who nearly stole Christmas from a small New Jersey town in the United States last week.
It was a squirrel.
Officials in Seagirt in New Jersey were puzzled after they discovered that the wiring to the Christmas tree and the lighting display in the town centre had been torn and cut. Town workers hastily repaired the damage by Friday and police then resolved to keep a surreptitious watch on the place to catch repeat offenders.
They caught it too and the less then penitent squirrel has since been charged with “criminal mischief” and “released on bail.”
This is an actual police quote from the Associated Press report that I got this story from.
No kidding!
But Seagirt may have been an exception in this crazy planet that we all call home. Christmas is supposed to bring peace and goodwill to all man in its wake. But if you were an alien peering at us from outer space, you might be forgiven for concluding that Earth was the insane asylum of the Universe.
Just take Syria and Iraq and tell the people there that it’s the season for sharing and caring; of receiving and giving. Nope, it’s raining shells out there and men are busy beating their ploughshares into swords. And, no, those Isis guys don’t suffer from insanity: they enjoy every minute of it.
Closer to home, there is the plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar who continue to stream into Bangladesh: first a trickle, now a flood running into over a half million.
And while a Nobel Laureate in Myanmar keeps silent, the Muslim government of Bangladesh, a relatively poor country, has responded magnificently to the task, unlike an Antipodean, and Christian, country to our south which has responded with distaste to a relatively small number of would-be immigrants.
Do they know it’s Christmas? Thankfully, they do know that in Harare when the city had a miraculous epiphany in the shape of Robert Mugabe’s ouster. Much like Seagirt, the season of joy descended on Harare.
In old Bob’s days, the people there were so poor that at Christmas, they only exchanged glances. But there they were, on television screens globally: dancing in the streets and fist-pumping the air in jubilation.
Old Bob had been booted out and, with a little luck and lots of ammunition, would never darken the doorsteps of Harare again.
Even so, he was neither flogged for his ineptitude nor jailed for his misrule. Instead, he was given a generous pension and allowed to keep all his titles from His Excellency to His Boniness.
In the generous spirit of festive forgiveness, the Zimbabwean government agreed that old Bob, 93, was too old to flog and too infirm to jail. He agreed enthusiastically although he secretly thought that old age was only important when it came to dead fish and good wine.
Moved by the spirit of Christmas sharing, he also provided the new government with advice, no doubt distilled from his 40-over years of leadership.
“90% of politics and leadership is deciding whom to blame,” he counselled them sagely.
And you had to admire the reasoning for a former noted, if incompetent, geneticist. Once listening to a childless couple bemoan their state, he replied: “if your parents never had children, chances are you won’t either.”
And in the spirit of the festive season, I shall leave you with one, searching question. Have you heard of the dyslexic devil-worshipper who sold his soul to Santa?
(Note to all you dyslexic readers out there: think Satan)