Shereen Ali

To­mor­row, Chris­tians cel­e­brate the re­li­gious fes­ti­val of Christ­mas, the sym­bol­ic birth­day of Je­sus of Nazareth. Many be­lieve Je­sus was an ex­pres­sion of God in hu­man form (some Hin­dus see him as an avatar)–an en­light­ened be­ing who preached and act­ed from love, wis­dom and spir­i­tu­al com­pas­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Chris­t­ian holy book, the Bible, Je­sus came here to serve peo­ple, save the lost among them, and to teach bet­ter ways of be­ing, de­spite the knowl­edge that this mis­sion would end in his own death. So the true mean­ing of Christ­mas, for tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian be­liev­ers, is the cel­e­bra­tion of a life's ex­am­ple of love, giv­ing, and self-sac­ri­fice.

The Bible ex­press­es the im­por­tance of love in 1 Corinthi­ans 13: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of an­gels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clang­ing cym­bal. And if I have prophet­ic pow­ers, and un­der­stand all mys­ter­ies and all knowl­edge, and if I have all faith so as to re­move moun­tains, but have not love, I am noth­ing. ...Love is pa­tient and kind; love is not jeal­ous or boast­ful; it is not ar­ro­gant or rude. It does not in­sist on its own way; it is not ir­ri­ta­ble or re­sent­ful. It does not re­joice at wrong­do­ing, but re­joic­es with the truth. ... So now faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the great­est of these is love." (Bible, Eng­lish Stan­dard Ver­sion)

Al­though Christ­mas cel­e­brates the idea of self­less love, the fes­ti­val has come to mean many dif­fer­ent things even with­in the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty. The T&T Guardian asked five Chris­t­ian priests of var­ied de­nom­i­na­tions: What is your Christ­mas wish for T&T? Here's what they said.

The pow­er of love

Rev Liselle Roberts from the Mora­vian Church of Laven­tille said her Christ­mas wish is for us to re­dis­cov­er and prac­tice the pow­er of love in our lives.

She said: "A lot of peo­ple say they don't feel Christ­massy, or they don't feel the Christ­mas mood, that the sea­son is just for chil­dren. It is be­cause we've sim­pli­fied Christ­mas down to just toys and gifts. For me, Christ­mas is every day. Christ died for us, and we should cel­e­brate that every day. We should love each oth­er as we love our­selves. First love God, then each oth­er.

"How can we ex­tend love to our fel­low man? Some­times we try to over-think stuff, but it's easy to show love. For in­stance, I grew up in To­ba­go, and there we know the peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ties; we'd of­ten go next door to 'beg for salt' from our neigh­bour (a To­ba­go say­ing); we say good morn­ing to peo­ple; we look out for the neigh­bour. But these days, too many peo­ple grow up in com­mu­ni­ties where we don't even know who our neigh­bours are. And we for­get to share. It does not mat­ter what re­li­gion you are–whether Chris­t­ian, Hin­du, Mus­lim or oth­er–love cross­es bar­ri­ers, and that is what can bring us to­geth­er. So that is my wish: that we look out for each oth­er, and show that we care gen­uine­ly about each oth­er."

Em­pa­thy, com­pas­sion,

com­mon sense

Ro­man Catholic Fa­ther Harold Imamshah works in three church­es–the St An­tho­ny's RC Church in Pe­tit Val­ley, the Church of the Na­tiv­i­ty in Crys­tal Stream, and the St Au­gus­tine RC Church, Cameron. For Fr Imamshah, em­pa­thy and help­ing the less for­tu­nate are im­por­tant:

"My Christ­mas wish would be that we all would see in the eyes of the needy, the ad­dict­ed, the ne­glect­ed, and the for­got­ten, the Christ child beg­ging for our at­ten­tion and our love," he said.

Pres­by­ter­ian Rev Clif­ford Rawl­ins, Min­is­ter of the Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed Church (the on­ly ful­ly ec­u­meni­cal con­gre­ga­tion in T&T), wish­es for some­thing very sim­ple: com­mon sense.

"I wish for com­mon sense to re­gain its place among us; that peo­ple would be more re­spect­ful, pa­tient and un­der­stand­ing, and to think and rea­son be­fore we speak and act. I pray for the spir­it of kind­ness which is recog­nised and blessed by hu­mans, an­i­mals, the uni­verse, and by God, for to be hu­man is to be kind; as the Christ­mas epis­tle read­ing from Ti­tus 3 says, "The kind­ness of God our Sav­iour dawned up­on the world in the com­ing of his Son Je­sus Christ."

Peace & har­mo­ny

Rev Fa­ther Ash­ley Mun­gal from the All Saints An­gli­can Church at Queen's Park West, Port-of-Spain, wish­es for a more peace­ful, har­mo­nious coun­try. He said: "I wish for love and co­op­er­a­tion among all peo­ple, ir­re­spec­tive of eth­nic­i­ty or be­lief sys­tems. My Christ­mas wish is for re­spect for all peo­ple and their right to ex­ist with­in this com­mon space.

"The mes­sage of the Holy Na­tiv­i­ty is a gift of hope to every­one, es­pe­cial­ly the low­ly, the mar­gin­alised, the poor and the in­signif­i­cant," he added. "These seeds of hope should per­suade us to rid our­selves of fun­da­men­tal­ism to cre­ate a bet­ter com­mu­ni­ty for hu­man­i­ty."

Mean­while, Rev Mun­gal's col­league, Canon Col­in Samp­son, who is Canon Mis­sion­er of the An­gli­can Church and for­mer Dean of Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, con­tributed: "There are nu­mer­ous faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions. Many things with­in their be­liefs may di­vide us, but there are more things that unite us. My vi­sion for Christ­mas is that we con­cen­trate on where we are unit­ed and work to­geth­er from there. And that we re­spect each oth­er's dif­fer­ences.

"There are far more rea­sons to em­brace one an­oth­er in broth­er­ly and sis­ter­ly love, than there are rea­sons to hate one an­oth­er. We are all one in the na­tal ward, and we are all one in the grave. Why should there be ha­tred in be­tween? We are all head­ing to ei­ther one of two eter­nal places; why not head to the one where we will be in peace, love, and har­mo­ny? Let's start from here," he said.