The Secret Stead is the pen name of a UK-based writer and
As the countdown to Christmas draws to a close for another year, it's often easy to forget the magic of Santa Claus is in the spirit of giving. Although the man may not live, his spirit should live on irrelevant of the commercialised religious beliefs we grew up with, and that created his modern image.Whatever doctrine you adhere to, it's easy to become sceptical over the spirit of the season retaining any of its magic, when Yuletide decorations start to adorn shop shelves just after Halloween. It stamps a materialistic black mark on the Advent that I'm sure cheapens the season for some. The run up to Christmas starts even earlier in mid-November for Eastern Churches, but it's a season of prayer, fasting, and penitence for them, not a shelf filler for mantelpiece socks.
Watching gaudy decorations go up so early everywhere feels like overkill on a grand commercial scale, and during these hard financial times apparently it's enough to make a Scrooge out of anyone, especially when at the end of a lean economic year it's difficult for families to put food on their own kitchen tables. Or is it more the case that we have forgotten how to be happy with the little things in life? And when buying gifts becomes more about the joy of receiving than the joy of giving, how much in the mind of people lies the real meaning of charity?
Recently, the British Social Attitudes Survey has published that attitudes have hardened against our fellow human beings; we care less for those worse off than we did two decades ago. It seems we are more likely to blame the poor for their financial hardships than we are to feel charitable. Isn't it ironic, then, this should be revealed at a time when shop shelves declare that the virtues of their version of 'Christian charity' is to give each other ever more extravagant gifts?
However, not everyone is buying into Christmas consumerism. The Advent Conspiracy is an international movement that urges people to replace consumption with compassion. The request is universally sound; what better gift can there be than to help others, if only to remind us that there really are people worse off than ourselves? There are thousands of people who give up their time without much fanfare to discreetly help feed the poor and support the infirm in times of crisis, and I personally know a few. Their private virtue is a model for any charity, whether its labelled human or Christian. It's to those people I wish a truly merry Christmas should they wish to celebrate it.
And when I read that leading health charity Dying Matters has said the cold weather could result in thousands of frail and vulnerable people dying at home alone this Christmas, in what is set to be the coldest December we've seen for over a century, I wonder if the best gift people could give to one another is simply to be a good neighbour. Helping the needy might not come wrapped up in glitzy packaging, but it comes straight from the heart. That's all that really matters in the giving of gifts to others; every real piece of magic begins with the opening out of a hand.
Published 22 December, 2010
