HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS One of the greatest benefit Facebook is its daily reminder of the birthday of friends. I wonder whether I could have kept the dates of the over 1.400 friends I have online. Honestly, there are still many of my friends whose birthdays I have forgotten or do not know because I have never taken time to ask. Do not ask me about birthday of family members! I am too poor at keeping statistics. Although I grew up at a time when celebrating birthdays was not so popular, aggravated by the fact that lots of parents (civil servants) changed their birthdays with the coming up of Birth Certificates in 1972 in Cameroon to prolong their working life, one birthday was celebrated every year: Christmas. We all looked forward to this day because of the new shoes, clothes and then special meals. It was one of those privileged days too to have a drink. To prepare for it, hygiene had to be at its best, both personal and home! The house and furniture had to be spotless and decorated to the best of one’s creativity. We went to Church, not so much to worship, but to show off the new gifts we had received and compare them with those of others. It was a day we looked forward to year in year out. However, with the dawn of adolescence, many of my peers came to think it was a celebration for children since we wanted to look different. In the midst of all the Christmas excitement, I wonder how many of us reflect over this Christ Event that makes this day so important. A critical examination of the celebration of the day makes it look awkward, to say the least. We normally celebrate the birthdays of people who are alive not those who have died. Secondly, when we celebrate someone’s birthday, we give gifts and cards to the person, not to ourselves, family and friends. Thirdly, when someone is celebrating his or her birthday, we meet to make a birthday party for the person in his or her home or in a leisure centre and not make a party for ourselves in our respective homes. We can conclude without fear that most often, Christmas makes us more inward looking than outward looking. No wonder, when people are not given the gifts they expect or not have the party they dream of, Christmas becomes more a day of being grumpy, full of complaints and negative criticisms and, often times fights and quarrels that easily lead to separation in some families. In order to avoid such attitudes, parents, guardians and siblings have to go an extra mile to satisfy the appetite of their family members and friends, may be not out of freedom, but by compulsion. As Christians, we celebrate the birth of Jesus because of what he did for mankind – he came to answer the deepest human needs. From the Christmas stories read during this season, we see that Jesus’ birth was not spectacular and exciting as we seem to make it look today. A few good-for-nothing people and three strangers from the East were privileged to know what was happening that night. The birth of Jesus became an issue to his contemporaries and to us nowadays because of his public ministry, passion, death and resurrection. Hence, the greatest feast of the Church’s year is Easter and not Christmas. It is Easter that made Jesus different from everybody who had been born of any woman. It is, therefore, Easter that makes Christmas important. Unfortunately, we have practically given more excitement to the celebration of Christmas more than to Easter. Throughout his life, people had been wondered about Jesus’ personality and the various answers ranged around him being a prophet or Elijah come back to life. But his resurrection identified his uniqueness in human history. It is then that his contemporaries recognised that in the person of Jesus of Nazareth God had visited mankind. Lots of interest was then developed to know this God-Man, Jesus and his role in the history of the world. We can then understand the logical account given about him in the Gospel of St. Luke and the Acts of the Apostles (Lk 1; Acts 1) If God has chosen us in Christ to be his adopted children (Eph. 1), it means that a Christian’s birthday celebration cannot just end up with his death. Our death should instead lead people to continuously celebrate the circle of our lives because of what we represented in history. We come to know great people before we go back to look at where, when and how they were born and who their parents are. It is like Nelson’s Mandela’s birthday (18th July) in which people in the world are invited to spend 67minutes and some community services, marking what he stood for. It is like the Martin Luther King’s Day (3rd Monday of January) which the Americans now use to stand against racial inequality. It is like the latest Mahlala’s Day which (12th July) the United Nations has instituted to celebrate what this young girl from the Swat in Pakistan stands and fights for, girls’ education. The only present Jesus needs from us is that we join with Him to recreate a new world where justice and peace reign; where by our love for one another, we can bring people back to unity; to assist him to complete the joy and happiness that people long for. In short, to follow the example that he gave us: love one another as I have loved you. This is what will lead people to celebrate our birthdays after we die. In other words, though we lie dead, our spirits will rise in the many hearts and souls that we have touched and they will always praise and magnify God for the gift of our persons. Let the celebration of Jesus’ birthday be a time for us to restructure how we celebrate ours. Instead of expecting gifts, cards and parties from others, may we give ourselves like gifts to those around us as Jesus gave himself like a gift for the salvation of the world: ‘This is my Body which will be given of for you… my Blood which will be shared for you. Do this in memory of me.’ HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND GOD BLESS YOU ALL
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 08:38:56 +0000
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