Linnette Vassell, Guest Columnist
FOR 10 DAYS this month, leading to this last week towards Christmas Day, I was away at a conference, held in Geneva, Switzerland, dealing with water and sanitation.
I had left at a time when the Christmas heat was building up and had a lot to deal with domestically with the pending arrival of my family from abroad so it was a little difficult to think that I had to travel during this busy time.
However, I decided to make the best use of the opportunity of being away. In addition to the importance of the conference itself, being away would provide a space for reflection. Sitting in airports for long hours, I could observe people on the move one of my favourite pastimes.
The London airports were crowded. There seemed to be a lot of family travel: adults and children together and children traveling unaccompanied to join adults in another place.
Did you know that it is not permissible for young unaccompanied female minors to be seated next to an adult male? Well, on the London to Geneva route, a young man was required to change places with his female companion so that the little girl traveling would not be seated next to him, but to the female. I am curious to know whether the same would apply if a male child were involved!
NOT MUCH PUBLIC HYPE
In Geneva itself, one of the things that struck me was that there did not seem to be much public hype about Christmas in comparison to what we experience here or see associated with the United States via television.
For example, there were no elaborate festive window displays in the stores, no images of Santa Claus and no proliferation of Christmas trees around the place. Stores were not opened on Sundays and, on weekdays, they closed at 6:00 p.m. except for Thursday nights when they opened until 8:00 p.m.
My young Jamaican friend and his Swiss partner who visited me explained that a concentration on family is most important in Christmas celebrations and that the religious significance of Christmas, denoted in terms of going to church, is really not pronounced within the culture.
This is the case in Europe based on a number of factors I imagine, such as the diversity of religious faiths. Many of our informal conversations about Christmas inevitably posed what was seen as the contradiction between the religious and secular observance.
My 80-year-old companion, traveling from London to spend the Christmas with her daughter in Miami, spoke of what she saw as the high consumer focus of Christmas in the context of the overall decline in religious affiliation and practice in England.
She said her own Episcopalian (Anglican) church in Yorkshire had stopped holding Sunday school for many years now because children and young people were not coming to church anymore, and because the parents, including her own children's generation, had more or less abandoned their religious traditions.
This saddened her, she shared, because although she is a member of many other organisations, she and others of her friends, have a need she said, for the fellowship and spiritual nurturing through the church, a need that was not being fulfilled.
Sickness, transportation difficulty, fear of leaving their homes especially during winter, meant that many elderly persons, could not share in religious worship, which is especially important to them at Christmastime.
SHARING AND CARING
What is our experience here in Jamaica?
Well, from my vantage point the family-togetherness aspect of the commemoration has remained quite strong over the years, and is getting stronger.
For example, for two years past, we went to the district that we are from in Manchester, cooked the main meal and shared in what turned out to be a district feast. This year, we varied the venue, coming back to Kingston, but with the same spirit binding family and friends.
The visit of relatives has been special, especially since in my case, I am seeing myself in the reality of being a senior in three generations my own, my niece and now her children also seeing myself as I saw my own aunt years ago.
What is particularly pleasing is that these young parents want their children to see and come to know some of the people and the places that shaped their own lives as young Jamaicans before they emigrated and are intent on revisiting their roots.
This is for me a part of the spiritual significance of Christmas that it opens us up to the sharing, caring and other expressions of love and relationship with one another that take us beyond the ordinariness of our everyday lives.
In my mind, regardless of our cultural moorings, this is a large part of what we are all searching for.
Send comments to Linnette Vassell at cvas@cwjamaica.com
