On Christmas Eve I have to leave behind my usual pet subjects of political, social and housing issues and wonder what thoughts come to you when you hear the traditional Christmas carols.
“Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.”
While the Maltese shiver and grumble with daytime highs of 15 degrees, lucky Europeans prepare for Christmas in heat filled homes. Tens of thousands of others though spend Christmas freezing, friendless and frightened. We may not be cold but plenty are friendless around Christmas time when family feuds persist and when so many new ones start. And that line about the crisp and even snow – will global warming make some countries freeze and others heat up? No guessing what will happen locally. The last summer was as unbearable as extreme cold can be…
“Away in a manger, no crib for a bed…”
Funny how so many carols are about homelessness? A baby cries. While we over-cosset our children it still isn’t a great Christmas for most of the world’s children. You just have to look at the faces of some of the immigrant children who get washed up on our shores to realise that we have so much, too much really, and that so many of the world’s little people have no childhood to speak of and never will.
“Little donkey, little donkey on the dusty road, Got to keep on travelling onwards with your precious load”
This for me just conjures up a Gozo scene, bright blue skies, rubble walls, farmer going past with his faithful over-laden donkey in tow, his face as wizened as the donkey’s eyes are full of patience.
“We three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts we travel afar…”
This makes me think of how many of us decide to jet somewhere this Christmas perhaps to visit family and friends laden with presents. Christmas is about many things but really it is to most of us just a holiday period where we all want a change of scene from the usual banalities of our humdrum existence. And, yes, let us look after our great Air Malta pilots and stop throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose.”
I’ve lost count of how many of the films I have to watch at Christmas time are about Santa and reindeer. So Santa just makes me think of the cinema. And that’s as close as Santa and reindeer ever get to me. Mind you, some character in the UK has raised a reindeer and takes him down with him to his local pub for a pint. And for all of us who don’t fancy a trip to Lapland to see the real Santa (!) they have now opened a Lapland in the UK, down in Kent where you can fantasise with your children about what Lapland would really be like
“Silent night, silent night, all is calm, all is bright.”
Hmm. Silence. You don’t get that much especially in the summer where the noise of petards is enough to wake anyone from the dead. Fireworks are wonderful though they kill people every year (the ones who are obsessed with making them) but petards are a national disgrace, as bad as our penchant for litter and for gluttony. So many Maltese have bellies like Santa but none of the charm, don’t you think?
“The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown, Of all the trees that are in the wood the holly bears the crown”
No holly in Malta and the only crowns we see are on those often funny looking women we send to represent us in beauty pageants abroad. And as we hot up for another crown, the crown that will go to those poor people who will represent us at Eurovision I do wish we could take ourselves a little less seriously, consume a little less, envy and gossip about each other far less and look in the mirror far, far more. Perhaps then we would be thankful for small mercies, as we all should be laden with presents and probably a little bit of sunshine on Christmas day too.
Have a happy easy Christmas day.
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