The Christmas menu

Ngamminpye Haokip *

Evening of Christmas at Imphal area on December 24 2014 :: Pix - Bond Armando

My first memory of a Christmas celebration was at my grandma’s. My mother had a busy time packing our belongings especially our new clothes (known as the ‘Christmas dresses’) the whole morning. And at noon, the whole family set off to our grandma’s village for the yearlong yearned merry occasion.

For a young boy of about three and a half years old, a toy gun was a compulsory thing in my Christmas menu to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Now, when I looked back to those days, if Jesus were born that year, I might have been recruited as one of the Roman soldiers who crucified our Savior Jesus Christ on the cross.

The celebration was filled with dramas, choreographies, dances, solos and jokes from those men who can tell the funniest tales of those times. And Christmas wouldn't have been a Christmas without the feast in which the whole villagers ate together in the church campus.

Christmas used to be a fun filled celebration and it used to be the best times of the year when the high school exams are over and our minds- free. And for the parents, the harvesting seasons were over and they started spending money for their child’s clothing and new materials were also added in the house. It’s the time of the year where parents are the richest.

But things changed when I grow older, the day I was baptized, Jesus was born inside me and that was Christmas (they said so). Jesus was born for me the day I accepted him in my heart, the day when Jesus was born for a reason. Had I not been reborn, Jesus’s coming to this world would have been in vain, individually for me.

Yet, after many Christmas comes and goes, I haven’t known what my basic duties are, as a Christian boy. I don’t know if going to church and abstaining myself from doing bad things would gain me a reward in heaven. So, after lots of thoughts and determination I wrote this note, especially for the people from my community in our state.

Christmas is a time when most families are most complete. Our family members who work in the cities and also who went to study away from home came back to their respective villages to celebrate this occasion. It is a time of merriness and holiness. But what do we gain out of Christmas? Our pastors/priest preached in the church, are we changed?

I believe what most of us gains from Christmas is that opportunity to spent an affectionate time together with family and friends. And that our minds are at rest from our busy schedules and we spent at least a day merrily in the countryside. And for some, our Christmas fun would be cherished and missed for weeks after it all passed. I don’t mean those are bad to have, but we could add something more to our Christmas menu.

Let the Christmas day be spent with the holiness. Yes. But let us also fill it with programs like mass community discussion, family planning, village development plans and economic growth prospects like plantations and animal farming. And also, let the officers in different fields from our village be given a chance to speak inspiring words to the younger generations.

Let us make it a day of learning by sharing the common diseases and its preventive measures. Let us share the basic knowledge even an uneducated person needed to have. Let us teach our parents about the advanced methods of growing various crops. Let us teach them about environment problems and solutions. Let us make the village life more enjoying while it develops more and more.

Let us teach them the things they could do for more financial income which every household needed every now and then. Let us teach the kids about various career prospects and the schemes they could avail; like those different scholarships to students and give them hope. We should know that the kids in the village need an example to get inspired.

Like in a curry, the menu had different kinds of ingredients and like a number of ingredients makes a good curry, let the Christmas speaker be not only the priest but also doctors, engineers, politicians and entrepreneurs etc.

Let us grow not only in faith but also in understanding the world. Let us spend more on economic development as much we spent on religions. For it is no longer the era of swords. It is the era of the economy, human rights, science & technology and environmental care.

For the simplest example; look into the data of how many chemical manures have been spent in your village for this year and how many bio manures gone wasted. Let us also see if the soils we cultivated today will be worth cultivation in the next generations.

Let us check if all the academic diseases are necessarily needed to be treated in the hospitals in the city. Christmas 2015! Let us bring the change we needed this time.

Merry Christmas!