Open Writing

Sometime during the last week of November, we received our first Christmas card. Up until that point one could have been forgiven for not realising that the Christmas season was drawing close.

There have of course been signs.

It started in November with the large national supermarket chains decorating their stores. This was closely followed by the local council, hanging lights across the roads. In the narrow alleyways and streets of the nearby town of Monforte de Lemos, Christmas carols can be heard from a network of loudspeakers.

Both the streets and the shops though are very quiet. Here in the heart of Galicia, Christmas Day is still less important to the children than Three Kings, January 6th, and long may it remain so.

Melanie and I have not spent Christmas in England for eight years and it's eleven years since we spent Christmas at home with family. We've managed to avoid the seasonal spreading of germs and infectious diseases.

Personally I think it's about time the marketing guys came up with a more appropriate name. Many years ago as a young boy, I remember being ever so politely chastised by my Sunday school teacher, Mrs Harper.

My entry in the Lockwood Baptist Church Christmas modelling competition was the nativity scene. Primarily made from an upturned yoghurt pot with some raffia matting for a roof, I had wrongly entitled it Xmas Nativity.

For a young boy with reading difficulties, this was a much easier word to spell. Mrs Harper quickly pointed out that the word Xmas took Christ out of Christmas.

I think for most people, Christ was taken out of Christmas some time ago. My wife calls it a racket - dictionary definition: an illegal enterprise carried on for profit, fraud.

Pretty near a perfect description. The word illegal might be going a tad too far, but other than that, perfect.

Perhaps that word wouldn't quite have the same ability to pull on the heart strings of young families. People might be less inclined to suffer months of hardship and debt if they felt they'd been cleverly manoeuvred into this position by Scrooge-like figures only interested in their own financial well being.

I read that 300 million tons of waste paper will be created in the UK from greetings cards. Did God have in mind such wanton destruction of the planet in celebration of his only son's birthday? Perhaps this is one of those convenient times when God gives man the right to choose.

It's good to have a recognised window of opportunity to remember those close to you, and those no longer that close.

Here in Galicia Christmas is still mainly a religious festival. How long it remains so, is impossible to say.