4 Letters
Plus Christmas message, Caption Competition, Quips & Quotes, Life in NZ
’ Tis the season of Christmas traditions. There’s the veneration of St Nicholas, dressed in red robes, whipping children who’ve misbehaved. No, wait, we don’t celebrate that. The beloved old saint, who could be very “cruel in correctyng”, according to William Caxton’s 1483 account, is more happily remembered for rewarding the good as a wealthy benefactor and gift-giver. There’s also the tradition of the Christmas riots. Again, best not repeated too enthusiastically or too often, these were in protest against the ban Oliver Cromwell sought to impose on Christmas. In the 1580s, Protestants hated the excesses of the feast day. As pamphleteer – read blogger – Philip Stubbs complained: “What masking and mumming, what dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used to the great dishonour of God and impoverishing of the realm.” By 1645, ministers found preaching on Christmas Day were locked up. The festival’s beneficial and charitable aspects, however, were emphasised in The Vindication of Christmas in 1652, which stressed the feast should “call home exiles, help the fatherless and cherish the widow”. Charles II, mindful of public sentiment – and the riots – brought back Christmas.
And let’s not forget another founding Christmas tradition, from 300 years after Christ’s death, when the Emperor Constantine first introduced the celebration of his birth into the feast of Saturnalia. This was the practice of turning the traditional Roman order upside down. Peasants became masters and plebs became bosses. There’s not, alas, a great deal of evidence of that particular tradition here this year. Or ever, come to think of it.
But if there’s one Christmas tradition we do get right in New Zealand, it’s in celebrating Christ’s birth in summer. If the Bible is anything to go by, the clues in scriptures all point to a summer nativity: shepherds watching their flocks by night; the Bethlehem census. Midwinter in Judea would mean snow and gales would have made those events unlikely in the colder months.
So forget the still-rampant images of red-cheeked carol singers standing in the snow watched by robins on bare branches. Our own radiant images of pōhutukawa blooming on sandy beaches beneath blue skies are much more seasonally apt. Yet the age-old Christmas traditions still count. The best are those that capture the wonder and pure joy of children, the happiness and merriment of celebrating the festive season with family or friends and the heartfelt impulse towards peace on Earth and goodwill to all. It is indeed true that small acts, multiplied by millions, have the power to change the world. This is the season of love and hope.
And there is no better time than Christmas to say thank you. “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it,” as writer William Arthur Ward once wrote. New Zealanders this year feel immense gratitude to all those courageous people, especially the first-responders, who selflessly stepped into the breach at the time of the Christchurch mosque shootings and the Whakaari/ White Island volcanic explosion. These tragedies would have been unthinkably worse without the heroic intervention of police, helicopter pilots, boat crews, other emergency responders and medical personnel in devastating circumstances. In March, the Muslim community showed us, with their generosity of spirit at a time of great sorrow, what it is to be a source of inspiration. And all around the nation this year – in Samoa also – New Zealanders have shown that it doesn’t have to be Christmas to act upon the Kiwi values of warmth, inclusion, fairness, tolerance and kindness. Those are traditions to cherish.
Our hearts go out to all those who have suffered loss this year as I join the whole team at the Listener in wishing you a loving Christmas and a safe and happy holiday.