Christmas Is Coming…

Bah, humbug? The Ghost of Christmas Repast…

Christmas in Australia has an antipodean flavour. In recent years, some Aussies have bewailed those who proclaim ‘happy holidays’, declaring that there is a ‘war on Christmas’ even while they offer libations to our cultural symbol of consumerism: an obese bloke overdressed in a heavy red suit, who sprinkles gifts like confetti during sweltering bushfire season.

Perhaps I am living proof of George Carlin’s notion that, “Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” I was not always so caustic. As a child, I used to wonder whether the star on top of the Christmas tree represented enlightenment or some similar paragon of virtue shining its light on the world. Despite my atheism today, I wish that Christmas – or religion in general – still deserved such symbolism. It would give the religious community a just reason to feel proud.

Instead, Christmas today seems to represent two things: gluttony on Christmas Day (please pass the turkey!), and the bestowing of gifts aplenty upon children and other family members as evidence that the prosperity doctrine is correct: God or Santa rewards good people with abundance, while punishing bad people with scarcity. Maybe someone should throw a spare turkey bone at hippie, socialist Jesus and his proclamations of helping the poor and oppressed?

If I could make a Christmas wish for Australia, it would be that Christians – including those Members of Parliament who profess such a faith – would revisit the human truths contained within the fable of infant boat person, Moses, who was accepted and welcomed into a new family and culture; and of refugee Jesus, seeking shelter in a nation that told him they had no room.

I would also hope that non-Christians and those of no religious faith – a growing and significant percentage – would look beyond the hypocrisy and affluence of Australia’s Christian elite, and find sanctuary in the supposed aspirations of a Parliament which professes certain ethical tenets but fails to practice them, and in a national culture that pays lip service to providing a “fair go” for the underdog while openly favouring the privileged. May our lives be the answer to the prayers of those whose faith allows them to pray away the world’s problems. “She’ll be right mate” should be a self-fulfilling Australian ambition to help others rather than a casually dismissive retort.

Let’s be honest. Despite platitudes of good will and peace on earth, the reality is that life – and death – go on, even during Christmas. For people affected by physical or mental health issues, homelessness, domestic violence, poverty, entrenched discrimination or myriad other problems, will this really be the season of good will, or simply another time of being overlooked?

In this sunburnt country, this stolen land, this vast panorama of yabbies and yobbos, of fires and football, we still largely defer to the cultures and religions of overseas nations and times. We have yet to formulate a collective culture of our own, born in the dusts and ochres of our home soil and underneath the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy that seeded our world and sheltered our indigenous cultures for millennia. Australians need what might be termed spirituality – not religious waffle, but a way of being authentic to their humanity and to their world.

If there is surely one ‘real’ meaning of Christmas, it that it’s for life, not just for Christmas. Learning from First Nations cultures, perhaps the wider Australian experience should adopt a Dreaming that does not focus upon ghosts of Christmas past, present, or future, but upon ‘everywhen’, a timelessness where we can come together and live in a way that respects people, environment, and planet.

As a Humanist, I do not experience Christmas in terms of religious devotion or worship, but as a time when the importance of family – whether nuclear or blended or extended or alternative, whether biological or technological or communal or universal – is celebrated. What will we each do this Christmas to help others in our universal human family? Are we our brother’s (or sister’s) keeper?

Perhaps we could learn from the life and altruism of Australian hero Sidney Myer, whose benevolence extended into Christmas and beyond the Great Depression:

On Christmas Day 1930 he had endeavoured to cheer the unemployed by holding a vast Christmas dinner for over 10,000 people at the Exhibition Building; free tram travel was provided, a band played, and every child received a present.

We do not all have the financial resources of Sidney Myer, but we can have the greatness of spirit if we dare. This is why I have published this Christmas blog article some weeks ahead of the event; I hope to inspire people to change their plans for Christmas, and instead consider the following possibilites…

Instead of buying that self-indulgent Christmas gift, might we instead donate the money to kiva or a charity to help others? Instead of purchasing generic greeting cards, why not buy charity greeting cards? Instead of attending that expensive Christmas social event, perhaps instead volunteer that time (and money) to a local homeless shelter or humanitarian cause? Why not forego the artificial Christmas tree, and spend an afternoon doing some real-life tree planting or helping some other environmental cause? Instead of stocking your home full of extraneous trinkets and baubles, why not gift the money to a homeless person? Maybe forego buying that ostentatious set of Christmas lights for the front garden, and instead use the money to light up the life of someone in need?

Are there ways we can invert the consumerist nature of Christmas and make it truly a time of sharing and celebration: for example, turning the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ into a 12-day marathon of creatively gifting to others in need? Better still, why not work out how to do some of these things all year round?

That would surely be a worthwhile Christmas gift to humanity. Happy holidays.

© 2020 Geoff Allshorn