By Damilola Adeleke
The same old “Jingle bells! Jingle bells!! Jingle all the way!!!” is again uniting Christians and non-Christians in the ancient ritual of Christmas. Ordinarily, Christmas has become synonymous with happiness and family reunion. Kith and kin come together. Food and drinks flow in households and the grueling grind of the passing year give way, temporarily, to a short period of rest and leisure. Yet some years in the history of nations have been hard and harsh.
No wonder Charles Dickens, wrote Bleak Christmas in early industrial England, a period of hard economic life and unrelieved bleakness. Industrial sooth filled the atmosphere and the classic indictment of the age was captured in the images of under aged children working in factories covered in sooth in industrial chimneys. These were literally the archetypal images of the devil of the industrial age. Dark devils sent to earth to curse industry captains and the rulers of the day!
Many Nigerians will swear that 2024 would easily pass as Nigeria’s anno Horribilis, our worst year in recent memory. Life has been hard for many. Living costs have escalated, making basic food a luxury for the rich. Even those who would have loved to get away from their usual abodes to the relative peace of the rural areas and countryside can either not afford to go there or are too afraid of the dangers on most routes.
But Christmas has since deviated from its ritual spiritual essence. It is now part of the commercial heart of the industrial and post industrial age. The current commercial and mercantile essence of Christmas is ironically an aberration, an act of disobedience and defiance of an early injunction from the Messiah himself. Those familiar with the biblical chronicles will recall the image of a young swash buckling Christ on horseback who rode in anger to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem to disperse traders and gamblers who had made the Temple their shop floor. Ostensibly with horse whip in hand, he scattered their wares, upset their trading tables and in anger whipped them as they scampered in different directions.
He charged them with defilement of a holy place by converting the temple into a ‘den of thieves’ and a haven of iniquity. He left them with a permanent sense of guilt and an eternal injunction that the temple was never intended as a place of commerce. It was an act of defilement to convert the place of worship into a place of trade. In other words, the work of God and its holy places was never to be degraded through commercialism and the drive for profit. That was perhaps a rather simplistic interpretation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.
By an irony of history, after several centuries of that mass flogging and original injunction, humanity has become curiously united in the global retail frenzy and annual ritual of consumerism of the season of Christmas. Capitalist multiplication of profit is in fact a glorification of Christian doctrine. He who has, more will be added unto him. From those who have little, even that which they have will be taken from them and added to the rich man’s trove. The rich get richer and the poor even poorer! It is written.
The familiar tunes of Christmas – ‘Jingle Bells!’, ‘Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer!!’, “Noel Noel!!!”, “Silent Nights, Holy Nights!” now openly clash with the clanging of tills and cash registers in mega retail shops as millions of shoppers get immersed in orgies of Christmas shopping all over the world. Walmart and Shoprite play the familiar tunes of Christmas to drown out the harsh metallic ringing of cash tills that must take in returns from your purchases!
Soon after Christmas day, it has become customary for retail business managers, accountants and executives to tally their sales figures and sum up their books as the best way to terminate the monotony of the ‘’jingle bells” season. They grin and dance ‘all the way’ to the banks.
The profit creed of retail consumer executives the world over has now overwhelmed the sober celebration of the birth of a sectarian messiah. Gold versus God has become the summation of the phenomenon of Christmas. Body over spirit.
https://skymediaconsults.blogspot.com/2024/12/prince-gbenga-folowosele-celebrates.html
Largely stripped of its original religious essence, Christmas has since degenerated into more of a fixture in the revenue calendar of retail giants worldwide. It is estimated that retail vendors of apparel, grocery, decorations, costumes and allied seasonal wares and accessories expect over 65% of their annual turnover to happen over the Christmas season alone. Christmas has become a holy birthday seized by the frenzy of a global market place. In the developed industrial world, retail sales figures over Christmas have become a credible source of statistics for economic well being. In good climes, Christmas retail figures climb high to indicate healthy purchasing power.
Adeleke Damilola (ACTION) is a versatile content writer with expertise in news writing and a seasoned media professional and broadcast specialist. Currently serving as News Editor for DNews Info, Damilola is also the CEO of the ACTION brand, committed to shaping lives and establishing a legacy of excellence for present and future generations.
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