Christmas is all around me

I don’t really DO Christmas... and my best December 25ths have been spent in  London in my sister’s flat, drinking the rather lethal hot punch my brother-in-law prepares, watching Bond movies on television while the men (brother-in-law and son) prepare the Christmas meal; stuffing myself up with whatever fantastic menu they decide to lay out at whatever time (brunch, high tea, supper), and then full of good food and drink, falling asleep on the couch only to wake up on boxing day, happy that the whole event for that year at least, is behind me! 

This year I am in Colombo.   As season’s greetings flood my inbox, facebook, twitter, etc etc  and the Christmas songs reach such a crescendo on Gold FM as I drive frantically to and from Arpico, Selyn, Barefoot, Paradise Road, Rhithi (cannot handle a pre-Christmas ODEL, I am afraid) filling in the gaps in my gift list, there are three thoughts I would like to share with you...

The first thought  is related to a photograph of the Lanka Hospital that Vivimarie van de Poorten posted on her facebook, 
Lanka Hospitals
 photo by Vivimarie van de Poorten
Entrance to the SLFI -
Christmas Bells and a Buddha statue
outside the SLFI, Colombo
and photographs I took outside the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute this evening.  All three of which suggest a multiculturalism in Colombo that we have had cause to think might be disappearing. 

But no one  of the BBS ilk seems to be protesting about the Christmas celebration and its obvious Western icons -  the lights, the trees, the Stars of David (do they know it’s the Star of David with very different connotations?) the holly, the snow, the bells, the reindeer,  the Santa Clauses  (saw a rather grotesque one today at Arpico in dark glasses and  betel stained lips, teeth and beard – looked bizarrely like he’d swallowed a child for breakfast), the carol singers (just heard the Salvation Army carol singers next door!)

But then comes the second thought, from Calvin... which actually could explain why there is no protest.  This is not a religious festival it's a commercial spendfest.



And finally the most sobering – this email from a South Sudanese colleague in response to an email exchange of Christmas wishes.  A brutal  reminder that there is no peace on earth.

In South Sudan Christmas season is a bitter one.  I am now stuck in a WFP compound in Bentiu, Unity State after escaping death on the Bentiu-Thar Jath road. We (two bus loads of women, men and children) were paraded yesterday against a swamp and were almost all shot dead.  Instead they selected two persons and shot them, while we were forced to move on foot to the police station.  Other persons were murdered elsewhere.  The plane that was supposed to take is from the Thar Jath airstrip in Unity State to Juba was forced not to land.  People were being asked for their ethnic group, identity papers, and decisions made whether to kill or spare them. I am badly shakened and traumatised.  It very sad for my country.

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