We, as a so­ci­ety and peo­ple, are ful­ly in­to the Christ­mas sea­son, in­clud­ing seg­ments of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty whose re­li­gious be­liefs dif­fer from those of the Chris­t­ian faith. The so­cial cul­ture as­so­ci­at­ed with the cel­e­bra­tions of the birth of Je­sus, the Christ to Chris­tians, is in full bloom. We are en­gaged in the shop­ping, plan­ning for the fam­i­ly gath­er­ings to come, and the an­tic­i­pa­tion of the giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing of presents and with parang mu­sic re­flect­ing an­oth­er as­pect of the mul­ti­di­men­sion­al Trin­bag­on­ian cul­ture.

It has be­come clichéd to ask the ques­tion as to whether the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of Christ­mas, as­so­ci­at­ed with the birth of Je­sus Christ, has giv­en way to mak­ing the sea­son a com­plete­ly sec­u­lar event shorn of the Christ be­ing sent by His Fa­ther, the Almighty God of cre­ation, to bring re­new­al to mankind. All of the above, based on the foun­da­tion­al state­ments of the Holy Bible, the core doc­u­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty, seems to be con­tin­u­ous­ly ex­pe­ri­enced as a mere back­drop to our so­cial cel­e­bra­tions.

It goes al­most with­out say­ing that the date cel­e­brat­ed as the ac­tu­al oc­ca­sion of the birth of Je­sus is one with­out foun­da­tion. It is well known that the 25th of De­cem­ber was adopt­ed over hun­dreds of years as a time to re­mem­ber and re­flect on the Sav­iour of mankind as de­ter­mined by the Chris­t­ian faith.

But even in our sec­u­lar cel­e­bra­tions, there is need to give mean­ing­ful and last­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to the tens of thou­sands of cit­i­zens in our coun­try and the bil­lions world­wide who are in­ca­pable, be­cause of their cir­cum­stances, to ful­ly en­joy what’s on the menu and that which is placed around the Christ­mas tree.

Against the back­drop of all of the above, the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the phys­i­cal Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions, in­clud­ing the fam­i­ly gath­er­ings and the shar­ing of love, there are in­creas­es as re­port­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties; those who use the oc­ca­sion to get what they con­sid­er to be their por­tion of the pie.

The out­stand­ing chal­lenge, which may have not even been con­sid­ered, is how to share the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of the Christ and so too the sec­u­lar­i­ty which has adorned the cel­e­bra­tions over the mil­len­nia, and to do so out­side of the sea­son of Christ­mas.

The fact is that even if large por­tions of the pop­u­la­tion be­come ful­ly in­volved in the shar­ing of gifts of good­will dur­ing this pe­ri­od, that will not change the con­di­tion of the so­ci­ety as we know it.

Start­ing in the present, the ef­fort to bring about a last­ing en­vi­ron­ment which will trans­form the so­ci­ety to one that is tru­ly con­cerned with the wel­fare of all, re­quires con­tem­pla­tion. It is a nat­ur­al chal­lenge which re­quires chang­ing the man­ner in which the so­ci­ety is struc­tured, the fact be­ing that our present cir­cum­stances breed in­equal­i­ty from the cra­dle to the cof­fin.

The need is for all with­in the con­fines of Trinidad and To­ba­go to find sys­tems, mea­sures and a guid­ing phi­los­o­phy to dis­cov­er and im­ple­ment ways and means to bring “peace on earth and good­will to all men/women.” That is a task of con­tin­u­ous liv­ing and learn­ing, be­com­ing brave enough to ac­knowl­edge short­com­ings and de­fi­cien­cies in our hu­man­i­ty.