My wish to­day is that every­one will be hap­py for Christ­mas. For what­ev­er rea­son. Find a rea­son. For some, hap­pi­ness comes with ma­te­r­i­al things. For oth­ers, it is to be with the right peo­ple—fam­i­ly, good friends. For yet oth­ers, it is a feel­ing, a spir­it—some­thing in­tan­gi­ble.

If you are Chris­t­ian, what might be most im­por­tant to you, is how mean­ing­ful­ly sig­nif­i­cant the life of Je­sus Christ has been to the world.

Here was a ba­by born in a cow shed, be­cause his par­ents were poor, with­out mon­ey or in­flu­ence, and at the age of 33, he was nailed to a cross, be­tween two thieves, by the au­thor­i­ties, for no good rea­son ex­cept that his pop­u­lar­i­ty with the mass­es was grow­ing and the words that he spoke at gath­er­ings and in his ser­mons, were con­nect­ing with the peo­ple, prompt­ing them to think and to en­vis­age a bet­ter world and to ques­tion the one they were liv­ing in.

And the re­li­gious elites of the time, as well as the wield­ers of po­lit­i­cal pow­er, both had an in­ter­est in elim­i­nat­ing him.

Je­sus was a nui­sance to both pow­ers. And so, they did, be­cause they could—to the dis­may of many, but, in a cli­mate of fear, they cru­ci­fied him, amidst the silent and pow­er­less mass­es, and, with the in­flu­en­tial fo­cused on self-preser­va­tion.

The po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of the time man­aged things in their favour. The ju­di­cial sys­tem re­spond­ed to their de­sire. Je­sus an­swered truth­ful­ly be­fore the court. But, no one stood with him. In a cli­mate of fear, no one found the courage of con­science. Even the high priests, feel­ing threat­ened by his bold ex­pres­sions and his grow­ing in­flu­ence, gave silent con­sent for his elim­i­na­tion.

In the end, he would ask God, in ex­as­per­a­tion, “Fa­ther why hast thou for­sak­en me?” But that is the sto­ry of Good Fri­day. Christ­mas is about the birth of Je­sus Christ, but re­al­ly, Christ­mas is not a birth­day par­ty.

If Chris­tians cel­e­brate any­thing, it is the ex­am­ple of the life that Je­sus Christ lived. He gave op­pressed, mar­gin­alised peo­ple hope and he of­fered the promise of a bet­ter life. And he was a liv­ing ex­am­ple of car­ing and shar­ing and giv­ing and for­giv­ing.

For every­body though, Chris­t­ian or oth­er, Christ­mas is a sea­son of good­will, giv­ing and char­i­ty. That spir­it of Christ­mas has seeped through and spread. Hence the ex­change of gifts, toys for chil­dren, San­ta Claus, the shar­ing of ham­pers, and wish­ing every­one you come across, Mer­ry Christ­mas. Hu­man em­pa­thy, per­haps re­strained, con­tained or sup­pressed all year, some­how seems to want to man­i­fest at this time. Christ­mas calls us to good­ness, hu­man­i­ty and a char­i­ta­ble ex­pres­sion of self. So it is, at the lev­el of peo­ple.

If as a coun­try, we want­ed to keep the spir­it of Christ­mas through­out the year, we would fo­cus on mak­ing things bet­ter. How?

1) Erad­i­cate hunger and food in­se­cu­ri­ty at a time of high prices, high lev­els of job­less­ness, and grow­ing pover­ty. Why should any­one go with­out food in a coun­try of 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple?

2) We would act to end pover­ty not by char­i­ty and hand­outs on­ly (some of that is nec­es­sary), but by giv­ing or­di­nary peo­ple the means to help them­selves—to work and, to have ac­cess to le­git­i­mate in­come.

That would mean think­ing through the ways and means to grow the econ­o­my, to cre­ate jobs and in­comes and to link the un­em­ployed to train­ing, ini­ti­a­tion, in­duc­tion and nur­tur­ing in­to a work cul­ture, in which, mak­ing a liv­ing, sav­ing and pru­dent spend­ing, be­come de­sir­able qual­i­ties to val­ue.

3) Eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, growth and job cre­ation would mean an eco­nom­ic fo­cus on ar­eas of the econ­o­my out­side of en­er­gy, even as we make the most out of what­ev­er en­er­gy re­sources re­main, and as we lever­age new op­por­tu­ni­ties in that sec­tor.

What could we re­al­is­ti­cal­ly fo­cus on? Things that will save for­eign ex­change and earn more for­eign ex­change pron­to. Like...

a) Tourist ar­rivals and tourist spend to man­age a week­ly flow of forex. That means think­ing through and work­ing out the source cen­tres, or­gan­is­ing and man­ag­ing the events cy­cle through­out the year well, de­vel­op­ing and man­ag­ing lo­cal at­trac­tions and ac­tiv­i­ties, and work­ing with com­mu­ni­ties and or­gan­i­sa­tions to do this well. And es­tab­lish­ing a law and or­der regime which con­tains the crim­i­nal el­e­ments but does not threat­en the free­dom of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

4) There are oth­er ar­eas to save and earn forex but I don’t have space here to ex­plore them now. An­oth­er time.

Mer­ry Christ­mas. Make it hap­py and good. Trea­sure those you love and those who love you.