Advent of Christmas and its true meaning

 Christmas songs and carols herald the advent of the King of Peace and it brings about an ambience of tranquillity. It is recorded that even the angels in Bethlehem declared: “Let there be peace on earth.”  The scripture says that the “the lion shall lie down with the lamb” (Is 11) and “justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever” (Ps 72).

The advent is truly a festive season for Christians all over the world. The mystery suggests that his birth had no male involvement but purely through divine intervention and thus he was called a sinless person, devoid of the original sin of Adam and Eve. The conception itself was divine intervention through an angel of God. The angel communicated the message of God: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” He was named Immanuel.

 

Immanuel means ‘God is with us’

According to the Hebrew language, Immanuel means “God is with us”. This name symbolises the prophesies in the book of Isaiah, where Isaiah foretells that a young virgin would conceive a child and call him Immanuel and when he grows in wisdom and stature, he would reject the wrong and choose a righteous path.

Jesus was predestined to be born to Mary, the chaste woman, by God, and was conceived through the Holy Spirit. The Bible provides two accounts which depict the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. These biblical accounts are found in the Gospel of Matthew, namely Matthew 1:18, and the Gospel of Luke, specifically Luke 1:26 and 2:40. According to these accounts, Jesus was born to Mary, assisted by her husband Joseph, in the city of Bethlehem. According to legend, the birth had taken place in a stable, surrounded by farm animals such as cattle and sheep. A manger, also known as “a feeding trough,” is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke 2:7, where the baby Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Even the Holy Quran speaks about Jesus, known as “Eesa” and mother Mary as “Maryam”. There are only minor disagreements and disputes between Christians and the adherents of Islam.

The whole notion of Christmas is about the arrival of an important person whose mission is to bring about a world abounding in love, compassion, charity and tolerance. The central message here is that the Son of God is now present among us and his sole mission is to prepare the mankind for an eternal life after death. Even Lord Buddha strived to expound this theory that we have a “temporary” life here on this planet and we have a bigger expectation after death and that seems to depend on what we do on this planet.

There is accountability for what we do wittingly and if there is no true repentance there will be no escape from divine justice. The process of salvation requires complete purification of defilements that surrounds our life’s journey. The worldly temptations are manifested in craving for wealth, glory and pursuit of power.

The mission of Jesus is a far cry from these human temptations. Jesus himself was tempted thrice because Jesus was God in human form with attendant human manifestations. One would require inner revelations to understand the theological exegesis of the Bible. Jesus was successful in countering the temptations through meditation and deep prayer. He proved that temptations are in fact the power of mind over matter. Here, mind plays an important role in rejecting cravings, for example, food that is required to sustain the human body, not the excess of food; lust or the licentiousness is the deviation from the reproductive exercise and the excessive indulgence which would bring chaos and misery to mankind. This has been proven to be so with the types of social deceases prevalent among men. The disputes on extramarital affairs and divorce cases that have accumulated over the years seem to have sprung from such behaviour.

 

Commercial exploitation of Christmas

Christmas has become a huge commercial gain for enterprises and there are studied marketing drives all over the world directed primarily at the consumerism during Christmas season. This culture of consumerism owes partly to the misunderstandings and misrepresentation of the true meaning of Christmas.

The consumerism knows no bounds and the primary task of marketing is to excite the customer to buy a product that he does not require. The marketers create social trends where the consumer is pushed to an abyss from which he cannot extricate himself.

Business schools produce thousands of MBA graduates and impart knowledge on how to deceive a customer and coax him to agree to buy a product. Most of the advertisements are on the special type of foods and in some extreme cases liquor is also included. There has been social research conducted that showed domestic violence had increased during the Christmas season and it was mainly due to excessive consumption of liquor.

 

True Santa

Santa Clause, or Saint Nicolas, or Father Christmas, is depicted as a white-bearded, joyous man with spectacles, wearing a red coat with white frills, who brings gifts to good children on the night of 24 December. He carries a big bag of gifts for children and there is yet another myth that his gifts are kept near the children who are fast asleep on that night. This provokes a sense of curiosity among children and the notion of Santa brings to mind a man who is said to be a very loving person.

The true mission of Santa Clause or St. Nicolas was a far cry from the modern day commercial Santas who are depicted to attract customers. St. Nicolas was in search of poor impoverished children who could not celebrate Christmas. Christmas is therefore not about celebrating per se but about sharing and taking care of the poor as well. This is often forgotten in the melee and excitement of celebrating Christmas.

 

Political message of the birth of a King

The scripture says that there were three wise men who wanted to know the whereabouts of the one having been born king of the Jews because they had seen the star in the east and were eager to pay him homage. Herod, as King of the Jews, was exceedingly alarmed, as he was of the view that a ‘usurper’ might have been born and would one day pose a grave threat to his rule and overthrow him from the seat of royalty.

Those who wield political power in our midst are no different from those who ruled the land in Judea those days. Herod had to mobilise every available machination to purge this new-born baby rival.

Herod consulted astrologers and was told that the star represented the fact that a ‘king was born’. It was the phenomenon that we saw in December 2014 in Sri Lanka in the run-up to the Presidential Election.

Herod influenced the wise men to search every place so that he too can go and venerate this Jesus. It was a clever ruse. When he realised that the wise men had outwitted him, he was furious. He mobilised his troops to slaughter all boys under the age of two.

Through divine intervention, Joseph and Mary had by that time fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s madness. May this Christmas bring peace and tranquillity to the people of this world!

 (The writer is a freelance journalist, a political analyst and holds an LLM in International Commercial Law)