Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful
Celebration, like age and ageing, is a privilege denied to many for various reasons. The reasons include, but are not limited to, ill-health, war or other circumstances that are not self-inflicted…beyond personal control.
Even then the denied must, somehow, get a feel of the festivity one way or the other. Christmas has become a universal ceremony beyond one religion or culture. Irrespective of one’s religion, somehow, Christmas has become a compulsory item in the calendar.
In 48 hours, on Saturday, the world will stand still in a festive mood as Christendom marks the birthday anniversary of Jesus Christ who is believed to be the son of God.
This ceremony has gone on for centuries since the acceptance of the date as sacrosanct. Records show that Pope Julius I in A.D. 320 declared December 25th as the day to mark the birthday anniversary of Jesus Christ. There is conflicting history as to the correct birthday but since December 25 was formally accepted, it has raged year in, year out, growing in fame and stature.
Christmas is everything joyous and lively, Christmas radiates peace and friendliness. On Christmas Day hardly are there hostilities anywhere globally. The story goes of two military units at a battlefield but against the directive of their out-of-the-field commanders decided to observe a ceasefire on Christmas Day and instead erected a Christmas tree with lights at their buffer zone.
To begin to imagine the power of Christmas is to attempt at tracing the history of Christ as foretold in the book of Prophet Isaiah: “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” which means God is with us.
Not only was Jesus’s coming to this earth miraculously revealing but his lineage was long arranged in the book of Genesis. “The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his.”
More than 2,000 years after his death, this man and his message are still spreading to the ends of the earth as foretold. The anniversary of his birth has become the world’s biggest festival. Even non-Christians like the Chinese have become the biggest producer of instruments for this festival. The Chinese lights and Christmas trees have dominated cities and villages at Christmas across the globe.
Can anything separate the people from celebrating Christmas? Can anybody stop Christmas from being a solemnity? Who can even stop Christmas from being celebrated? Nobody.
Saint Paul, one of the Apostles of Christ in a letter to the Romans in his time, provided the answer that still endures till today. He posed about eight questions one of which is, Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? And he answered it promptly and emphatically, “No one and nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. He went further to spell out the kinds of things that could ordinarily separate us from the love of Christ, as “tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword or even death.”
These are the sort of things that are happening to us even today in this country as we mark the 2021 Christmas. Saint Paul by that was merely underscoring the inevitability of Christ in our lives under whatever circumstance.
In 2011, some terrorists, masquerading as Boko Haram militants, bombed Christmas Day worshippers at St Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, a suburb of Abuja, killing 35 persons including women and children. If they intended to spoil or stop the festivity, they failed woefully because instead, the global community including non-Christians stood in solidarity celebrating with them.
In 2020, a strange illness called Coronavirus, otherwise called COVID-19, sent the world scampering with social distancing as the main requirement of preventing it. But even that could not stop the celebration of Christmas that year. Ahead of this year’s Christmas, they have announced the arrival of yet another more deadly virus called Omicron all to frighten and slow down this year’s Christmas but the faithful have ignored them all cruising the season like no other.
With all these tribulations unable to stop Christmas from being celebrated, is it then herdsmen, banditry, unknown gunmen and kidnappers that will? Certainly not. Is it even fuel scarcity? Several attempts in the past to use petrol scarcity as a factor to frustrate Christmas failed woefully to halt the tempo.
The people of the South East of Nigeria known for their mass movement during the Christmas festivity have had to endure unprecedented obstacles ranging from very unusual inflation, overwhelming and highly inconvenient and provocative checkpoints by various security operatives as well the extraordinary billing of electricity by the Eastern disco every year all intended to extort and discomfort Christmas returnees.
But not even these Shylocks at home have ever slowed down the pageantry and gaiety of Christmas.
The correct and most sensible thing for all the negatives standing as a wedge against good life and joy for humanity is to embrace the spirit of the time, down tools and join in the love of God and of neighbours instead of trying to undo what you cannot.
Perhaps, the reason the Apostle Paul chose to highlight so many terrible things that are incapable of halting our love for Christ, is to make sure we knew that there is no exception and that nothing, no matter how horrible that it may be, can separate us from the love of Christ. No. Nothing can separate us from Christ’s love. “Christ’s love is not a memory because he is by his actions a living and everlasting Son of God.” No wonder this is a birthday like no other.
If some anti-Christian agents glow in their mean thinking that they could slow down the significance of Christmas through injection of stress, such thought is because they are refusing to imbibe Apostle Paul’s view as copiously expressed in his letters to the Romans or the account of the American Love Singer Kelly Clarkson that “the thing with Christmas is that it almost doesn’t matter what mood you’re in, or what kind of year you have had–it’s a fresh start.”
In this 2021 Christmas Nigerians are going through unprecedented strains arising from insecurity and poor economic management made more visible by underwhelming political leadership performance. But even at that, the mood is unchanging at Christmas, because nobody or thing or any circumstance can stop Christmas. After all, it is in the mind. For Ndigbo of Nigeria, Christmas has become like Biafra, engraved in their hearts, the more you try to kill it the more pronounced it becomes.
Christmas as a mood is not boxed into season or time even though it’s a day’s event but the message therein and which is in our hearts is everlasting. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy is to have the real spirit of Christmas in you. That is why Santa Claus, the legendary Father Christmas, is known for bringing gifts to children at Christmas and is a critical character in all Christmas stories. Christmas is a season of giving, sharing, and a time when to be joyous.
This entails that we need Christmas in our lives every day for good leadership, for justice and fairness and charity in our hearts as a nation. Through that, we may get a better and prosperous Nigeria.
Merry Christmas, Nigeria, and may God bless all of us this season and beyond.
