Hartley Neita, Contributor

Our children's children may one day tell their young ones that once upon a time, there was a place called Jamaica. God's truth.

That Jamaica was a beautiful country. There were many rivers flowing through the land and emptying their waters in the sea. The land crumpled and formed hills, and great mountains rose into the clouds, seemingly touching the sky. There were forests of trees, many bearing fruit. Some only had flowers from which birds drank sweet nectar.

Then men came, a few at first, and then in droves. They cut down the trees to create space for houses, factories, offices and stores and caused the land to be scoured. They drained the rivers to provide the towns and villages with domestic drinking water; and the land which was once watered by these rivers became exhausted and dry.

In the beginning, the people were close to nature and to God. They built churches, and the country became known as a place with more churches per square mile than anywhere else on Earth. In some villages, there were two churches, and in many towns, there were four and five such temples, each competing with the other for the ears of the Almighty.

On Sundays, church bells pealed loud and long, calling the parishioners to worship. The bells rang music. They also tolled when a member died.

It was a beautiful sight on Sunday mornings in the village of my youth to see the women dressed in white and wearing white stockings and shoes and white straw hats. The men wore dark suits, mainly made of tweed imported from England. They also wore felt hats, which they doffed, when they passed the ladies. Children walked with their parents.

After the services were over, families gathered in the churchyard and greeted one another, promising to visit each other's homes later in the day.

Christian upbringing

Sundays were quiet days. So, too were the four special religious days each year - Easter, Christmas, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. In those early times, people worked six days each week. Those who loved horse racing took off a half-day on Saturdays. So, too, did cricket lovers. The wealthy played bridge and billiards in the secrecy of their sport and social clubs. Mostly, however, the majority of people had only this one day - Sunday - for rest and worship.

But they also wanted to play and have fun. Something had to give. Sundays became the first casualty. Cricket was then the most popular sport in Jamaica.

The Christian upbringing of Jamaicans did not allow for cricket to be played on Sundays. In fact, there was no play on Sundays in international matches. So, there was a compromise. Instead of starting the matches at 10.30 a.m. on Sundays, as was on Saturdays, match play began at 11.30 a.m., giving enough morning time to God.

There was little protest. Only Anglican Bishop Percival Gibson took note of the trend. Young men and women out of elementary schools, he said, were becoming educationally mobile, entering secondary schools and the University College of the West Indies and were becoming less religious.

"Indeed," he said, "they obtained a little knowledge - which was a dangerous thing. And they discovered the more educated they became, the more they abandoned the mores and habits of their elders.

"And having become intellectuals, they have at last discovered there is no God," he thundered from his pulpit.

Meanwhile, stores and shops were not opened on Sundays. Easton Lee has this to say in one of his poems which quotes his father's advice:

"Go church Sunday, serve God.

Come home after church, serve man."

For years, only drug stores and later, pharmacies, opened for about six hours on Sundays so that the public could buy headache pills to counter the alcohol imbibed on Saturday nights. Soon, recognising they had a Sunday monopoly, pharmacies added other products such as toothpaste, hair oils, facial powder, cologne, perfumes, books and magazines, ice cream, chocolates and other sweets.

Some 25 years or so later, the stores in the plazas on Constant Spring Road in St. Andrew opened their doors to customers to enable them to enjoy the pleasure of Christmas shopping in comfort during the month of December.

This time, there was a protest from the Rev. Earl Thames, a former moderator of the United Church of Jamaica and Grand Cayman.

"Sundays," he said, "have always been set aside as a day of worship and service for Christians from the beginning of the Christian era. But the widespread opening of businesses is a clear insult and disregard of the religious convictions of the Christian community."

Ready-made target

It showed a complete disregard of the religious significance of the season by so many in the commercial world. To them, he said, Christmas was merely a time to make as much money as possible, even if this meant tempting Jamaicans to use the time set apart for the worship of God to buy material goods. This was nothing less than the worship of Mammon and as such, was idolatry.

Today, stores open on Sundays year round.

Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays have a little time yet before they, too, will become days of pleasure. There still remains a fear and respect for these two very holy days.

Christmas Day, however, is a ready-made target. It is already a day for fun and frolic. Billiards and skittles are enjoyed in the quiet of sporting clubs. Dominoes have left the piazzas in the centres of villages and are played on the back verandas and porches of homes. Family dinners end up as parties and neighbours gravitate to each from home to home. Entertainers have visited places of safety and senior citizens' homes on Christmas Day and performed for these shut-ins, and I pray and hope these Christmas cheers are genuine and not done for publicity's sake.

Football is watched on Christmas Day on television sets; it's only a matter of time before this game is played at the National Stadium under lights. Cricket, too, will be played at Sabina Park, also at night, as if God goes to sleep after sunset.

Once upon a time there was a Jamaica whose people respected Sundays. The time will also come when Christmas will not be what we knew it was. We did not recognise it then, but Santa Claus replaced the founder of Christmas in our time, and how we loved the jolly old fellow. We still think of him fondly.

Will future generations say once upon a time there was Ash Wednesday and Good Friday? Let us pray!