Shebi
na jeje I Siddon dey whack bread and akara the other night when my eyes narrowed down
on the string of words on the half-torn newspaper that now served
as my dinner plate. The room was dimly lit, courtesy PHCN, or what is
it they are called now?
Well,
I had a dying rechargeable lamp looking down on the meal; it did well
to light up just the portion of the table where I had my now
half-consumed
bread and akara. I could now see the lettering of the write-up clearly.
"I can always read along while I down my meal," I thought. The
article was about Christmas and the author added one vocabulary like that.
I consoled myself that I will get the meaning by the time I am through
with the article, but by the time I was done with the first, second
paragraph, I had already looked for the name of the author. I thought it
was the man from Edo's Oredo Constituency, Patrick Obaiagbon.
As
I continued reading, the article was "sweeting" me, though I didn't
understand much. See vocab! Jejune! What is jejuning? Did he imply
ojuju? Perfidious!
Machiavellian! Chei! This guy don quickly borrow 2 Pac name use o. Yawa
dey! Anyway, the akara oyell didn't allow me see everything clearly
sha, so I decided I must Google it, read and share. I found it on vanguard's
website and it was there I discovered the article
was actually published on the 29th of November, 2013. If you have not
seen it, it is still news...
Download Kindle E-books
Christmas and wanton revelry on november 29, 2013 at 12:55 am in viewpoint
The
reason for the Christmas season is the commemoration of the glorious
birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ. Although, the exact date
of His
birth remains an issue of great scholastic saber-rattling, one
infallible truth that stands with unshakeable firmness is that Christ is
the immaculate quintessence of love.
The
commemoration of his birth is supposed to be a season of spiritual and
physical retreat for stock-taking about how well we have lived a
Christ-like
life.
The
synoptic and hedonistic zeitgeist that has now become the idiosyncratic
concomitant of Christmas celebrants redounds to the truism that the
spiritual
epiphany of Christmas is now sunken in the quagmire of Dionysian
exuberance. Hence, the Greek philosopher Socrates said in his PLUTARACH
that “bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and
drink that they may live”. The bacchanalian debauchery
during Christmas season is morally nauseating.
The
penumbra of darkness enshrining the subject of Christmas Day is further
silhouetted by the avalanche and pyrotechnic of lies unleashed by
religious
harlequins. One school of thought said in the Encyclopedia American
that “the reason for establishing December 25 as Christmas day is somewhat
obscure, but it is usually held that the day was chosen to correspond
to the pagan festivals that took place to celebrate
the birth of the sun.
The
Roman saturnalia is a festival dedicated to Saturn, the god of
agriculture and to the renewed power of the sun. Some Christmas
customs are thought to
be rooted in this ancient pagan celebration.
All
this not withstanding, the concern of this write-up is the ghoulish way
and manner in which Nigerians, nay the people of the world, celebrate
Christmas
with prodigal intemperance and saturnalian revelry. There is no concern
for the spirit of truth, peace, honesty and love, attributes that
constitute the hallmark of Christ’s life.
How
can one explain a situation where through random sampling our President,
52%of our legislators, 49% of our Governors, 50%of our Ministers, 50%of
our
local government chairmen, 60% of our councilors, 25% of our
commissioners and 52%of Nigerians are Christians.
Yet
we still luxuriate in corruption of monumental proportion. Christians
are cocooned in filthy lucre, homosexuality and sodomy, grotesque
terpsichorean
fits in places of worship, assassinations, kidnappings, bribery and
corruption, cultism, depraved economic and political prebendalistic
graft. Which Christ are we celebrating? Which God are we celebrating?
Which
Holy Spirit are we celebrating? How can we truly be celebrating
Christmas when we walk past dead bodies, lepers, the poor and needy
without batting
an eyelid and sparing a thought for them. Adam Smith posits that “no
society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater
part, of the members are poor and miserable.
Christ
admonished us to strive for the lofty and high ideals of a noble
conscience and humanism, and that life is not all about money! money!!
money!!!
But about lifting up mankind, about sacrificing our lives to lift up
mankind, about being Christ-like in conduct, about sparing a thought for
the poor and about giving generously to mankind. Our churches,
ecclesiastical hierarchy and Christmas alike, have
made a very little impact on the moral growth of society because,
they build their church close to St. Peter and yet worship at the gates
of hell. A symphony of lunacy.
Christmas
is not a season for jejune insipidity in spiritual matters. It is not a
period for perfidious and Machiavellian dis-ingenuousness.
It
is a period for our leaders and the citizenry at large to heighten the
vibrancy of our cerebral virtuosity and eviscerate pragmatic solutions
to the
problems of mankind by being sober and musing on how, why and what
Christ lived for.
We
must desist from walking, dancing, strutting and drinking from the
frills and thrills of libertines. Jesus Christ is love and all our
utterances and
actions should be propelled by love.
We
must realise and be ever conscious; of the fact that life is ephemeral.
It is volatile and evanescent. We must walk steadfastly with
humility and fear
of God, for no condition is permanent and nobody knows tomorrow.
Hence,
essayist and poet, Matthew Arnold said: “….For we are all like
swimmers in the sea, poised on the top of wave of fate, which hangs
uncertain to
which side to fall. And whether it will roll us out to sea to the deep
wave of death, we known not and no search will make us know: only the
event will teach us in its hour”. Therefore we must live for Christ and
in Christ Jesus by serving mankind in truth and
love.
Finally,
we must see the world as one big philharmonic and symphony orchestrain
which we are all players and so long as we pick our tunes and keys right, the
musical configurations and rhythms will be melodious. But once one or
two players degenerate to a discordant tone, the whole graceful symmetry
and grandiose sublimity of the rhythm will precipitate a symphony of
lunacy with no granule and scintilla of integrity
in it. Let us celebrate Christmas by sparing a thought for the poor as
Christ did and not saturnalian debauchery. HAPPY CHRISTMAS
BOBSON GBINIJE, founder of the Mandate Against Poverty, Warri.
I know, I know. don't you worry. I will break the content down to you: Baba simply said "You must buy a chicken, if not a goat, for me next Christmas.
Kindle Reader for Android
