Nkosilesisa Ncube, Sunday Life Reporter
CHRISTMAS Day is just a week away and as expected the streets are filled with festive cheer. Shops have put up their Christmas decorations and the more radical shops even have a caricature of Santa Claus at their entrances, spreading the festive spirit. In homes, the Christmas lights are up and the radio alternates between Silent Night and All I Want For Christmas.
People are busy getting ready for Christmas office parties and presents for their loved ones. In all this beautiful chaos, one cannot help but notice that for most people, the true meaning of Christmas ends up getting lost in all the festivities.
Thamsanqa Ndlovu, a junior at a local audit firm says that for him, Christmas time is simply a time to rest and put all the pressure from the year’s work to rest.
“I work long hours and sometimes even my weekends are spent at the office. The Christmas season is the only time of the year that I actually have to myself, and to me Christmas is just about staying home and relaxing before the New Year starts,” he said.
Ndlovu’s sentiments are shared by most working class people who have grown to view Christmas time as just another public holiday where they can stay away from their respective places of employment, disregarding the gist behind the Christmas holidays.
While some use the Christmas holidays to take time off their ever busy schedules, for others the festive season is a time to go into a full party mode. A popular meme on social media reads, “Dear Liver, This December you will have to stay strong”, a not so subtle suggestion that the festive season will be characterised with series of drinking and partying.
With a calendar that is so decorated with concerts and shows around the festive season, it is almost impossible for one to miss all of these shows.
For people like Samantha, a university student, the festive season is simply about having a good time.
“For me, the entire month of December is about long nights spent out. It’s the only time of the year when my friends who are based outside the country all come home and we make the most of it,’’ she said. Again in this case although there is nothing particularly wrong with going out with friends, the idea behind Christmas is neglected.
The festive season has turned out to be the busiest time of the year for most businesses, with people rushing to fill up their refrigerators with whatever delicacies will be served on Christmas Day and their closets with the trends of the season. The festive season has since become, for people in business, a time to maximise profits and the holiday has become just another commercialisation scheme.
Research carried out by Moneyweb in South Africa proved that Christmas spending in South Africa, for the festive season alone was around R989,5billion per year.
Christmas holidays have been used as an excuse by corporates to sell products that the public really does not need at discounted prices. Associating Christmas with gift giving and gift receiving has further associated Christmas time with extravagance and not the wholesomeness that the holiday should be about.
Christmas is a Christian holiday, a celebration of the birth of the leader of the Christian community and in essence the birth of the Christian religion. Celebrations of the day should therefore be centred on Christ. While it is good to dabble in secular activities over the holidays, these should not override the origins of Christmas Day.
Pop singer Taylor Swift could not have put it better in her song Christmas Must Be Something More when she sang, “We get so caught up in all of it, business, relationships, and hundred miles an hour lives. And it is this time of the year and everybody is here. It seems the last thing on your mind is that the day holds something special. Something holy, not superficial. So here is to Jesus Christ who saved our lives.”
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