Dr. Visakhonu Hibo
Kohima
Every child, every teenager and every adult looks forward to Christmas celebrations. Savings for Christmas to buy cakes, decorations and dresses are fast becoming a thing of the past. Come Christmas, multiple weddings/Programmes dominates December, which tears away Christmas budgets making it extremely difficult for ordinary families to survive. It causes a lot of tension in many struggling homes. While attending a wedding, just close to Christmas, an officer's wife said her pocket is a desert owing to too many weddings. Imagine, the Naga crowd, my lot, who are compelled to celebrate Christmas with Sahara desert pockets aptly coined Sukha Christmas! To top it all, the physical exhaustion and horrible traffic is washing away the Spiritual preparedness of a meaningful Christmas. Christmas Choirs suffers due to lack of enough practice time.There is no time for family gatherings as everyday is a something day. The sanity and sanctity of Christmas must be respected and honoured better than ever before. My appeal to all Church leaders, irrespective of denominations , is to feel the pulse of the common man and allow us to have a literal Merry Christmas and a happy New Year; before the pressure cooker bursts. Marriage is honourable and it is always a joy to be part of a holy matrimony. Jesus showed us where we should be when He attended the wedding at Cana. The request is to just have as many holy weddings as possible throughout the year but spare from the 11th of December till the 3rd of January, the next year. We do need to build families stronger for a better tomorrow. Christmas is family time. Christmas is Jesus's time especially. Christmas is a time to experience the joy of giving and appreciate God's gift of Salvation more. It is also the sweetest time of the year. Let us all contribute our bit towards having a truly, undisturbed, Christmas next year and the years to come even though this year is a wee too late. Let us relax and look forward to commemorating the birth of our Saviour. Merry Christmas.
