Wednesday, 8 of September of 2010
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed
Poverty, war and climate change are all indications that individual is not as heroic as we once thought. Do we need a modern-day messiah?
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This article has just been published at Comment is Free on the Guardian website
With the Muslim festival of Eid celebrating the hajj last week, and the celebration of Christmas this week, I couldn’t help myself but to indulge everyone in a little festive humour.
I have taken some beloved Christmas songs, and re-written the lyrics with a twist, and then had the carols performed by traditional carol singers. The result is an acoustic treat.
We wish you an Eid Mubarak -
A timeless classic, with a bit of modern day multiculturalism
… well, I’m not sure anymore. I do know that being brought up in a nominally Christian school, and in a country that once paused at the end of the year to assess itself, that it used to be the Season of Peace and Goodwill To All Men (which we should now read as ‘to all people’ as gender equality legislation should suggest that women too are permitted peace and goodwill, except not on the big day itself when they have to come up with an enormous and perfect family meal).
Then it seemed to become the Season To Be Jolly. It’s not quite on a par with achieving global peace, and pushing ourselves to be better people, but in a society of high levels of stress, trauma and depression it was not wholly inappropriate.
But lately, lately, it’s now the Season to be Gorgeous. According to Boots in their new advertising campaign (and yes, I get that their strapline is about selling cosmetics etc), Christmas is now all about hair, make-up and spangly lycra. Because of course, that is what all we women aspire to (and according to gender equality legislation, probably men too), and what brings (short-term) meaning to our lives. Do I sound cynical? I don’t mean to. Because I really do think that we are indulging in parties and creating delicious good looks for a sense of instant fulfilment and momentary happiness, that masks the fact that we no longer, as a collective, seem to aspire if even for a day or month for the lofty goals of peace and goodwill.
We dream these days to be good looking and sexy. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s pretty low on the scale of the totality of what human beings can aspire to and achieve. I think we should advocate a return to the Season of Peace and Goodwill as a marker of our aspirations. As they sang in Happy Talk “You’ve got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”
Only 44% of children aged 7 to 11 believe that Christmas is about Christ, according to a survey carried out by Childwise for the BBC. One in six youngsters felt sad, nervous or left out during the festive season. Youngsters spoke about feeling “cold”, “tired” and “worried” and made comments like: “Scared in case I get a rubbish present.” One in 10 children said that their parents were hard to buy for because they were fussy, awkward or did not use previous presents.
