Christmas 2016 and More

Christmas 2016 and More ©

By Michael Casey

Suddenly Christmas is approaching fast, I believe in keeping Christmas in December so as its 28^th Nov I think I’m safe in talking to you about Xmas. Xmas is not X   mass, it is Christmas, the X represents the Cross after all. So what does Christmas mean to you. If you are Jewish you have Hanukkah or Eid if you are Muslim, and there is Diwali for Indian families. We each have those special religious and family times. Luckily here in Birmingham we celebrate all of them at home and in our schools, so kids get sweets on more than one occasion. We even have white British teachers dressing in saris to get into the spirit of such occasions, but that’s enough about my sister.

So what about Christmas? In Ireland back in Kerry and beyond people keep a candle burning in the window to help guide the 3 Kings I believe, if I’m not  totally correct I’m sure somebody will leave a comment for me, maybe the priest in Cromane Lower near Killorglin. Christmas is innocent and all about family the first family and then our own.

It’s from the Kings that we get the idea of presents at Christmas. So you might say  Christmas invented or spawned  Amazon and Macys  etc. If you work with a big crew of people you might spend a week’s wages buying 40 little presents for all the people you work with. So you give 40 presents and receive 40 little presents in return, girls are more likely to do this than lads, lads will just go down the pub and give and receive lots of liquid presents, certainly that  was the case in my computer room days.

But for girls it’s a day of reckoning, she did not give me a nice present last Christmas so she’s getting a really rubbish present this year, I could name names but I won’t. And so hours are spent deciding what present to give, assuming the person is worthy of a Christmas present this year, or have they been excommunicated from the presents list, naturally everything done in the true spirit of Christmas.

When you send Xmas cards, a tradition brought to us by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, or was it Christmas Trees, you really do need to research that for yourselves. My point though is that there Are nice really nice cards with the Baby Jesus on, or Caravaggio prints, by the way Andrew Graham-Dixon wrote a book and has a dvd about Caravaggio, it’s  a great Xmas present. Where was I, yes cards, you have nice ones for your holy friends and maiden aunts, then there are the drunken santa ones for the lads in the office. There are also rude ones for the girls you really fancy, not forgetting ecards with dancing elves where you can insert your own face.

 Christmas means shopping, blame the Kings for that, and as you dash backwards and forwards or even forbackwards and backforwards everywhere have you ever heard the Lindisfarne song, Winter Song. In  it there is a line “Santa is in his module, he is an American astronaut, and Jesus he got busted for befriending the wrong sort”  So as you think of the real meaning of Christmas, or any other high religious festival, do you notice the beggar in the street? Your wrapping paper costs more than a packet of biscuits that’ll fill her or his belly for a day.

So this Christmas and perhaps more often than that, I’m not asking you to give the beggar money, which you’ll say he’ll spend on beer, or she’ll spend on drugs. I’m suggesting and I’ll not even use a stronger word than that. Can I suggest you give a packet of biscuits or a banana or two or a 19p bottle of water to your member of the human race. Just randomly share something with the lease of my brethren.

Now for me and yes I really mean this the best thing I get every day is a goodnight kiss from my daughter, and I’m still alive 2 years on from my unplanned quadruple heart bypass, yes my Arthur my arthritis still brings me much pain, and my bypass has left lingering pain too, though I DO have perfect blood pressure. And I have Ckd too, but compared to the beggars in my street I am such a lucky lucky man.

There is something else I receive most days which is of incalculable value, it’s a God Bless from the beggars in the street when I give them biscuits. And maybe just maybe it’s those God Blesses which will decide whether I get into the Final Party. For whatsoever you did to the least of my brethren you did unto me. Merry Christmas, Eid, Diwali or Hanukkah to each and every one of you.

And to those of you who have no faith at all I can say is, can I have 17 pints of Stella Artois and a packet of cheese and onion crisps, and if you pay instead of hiding in the toilets when it’s your round, now that would be a Christmas Miracle.