Borrowed from Times of India
Hmmm… whatever… i believe that just like d birthday hours….. d christmas eve and the Christmas day… whatever one wishes for sache mann se …. one gets….. 🙂 so be careful what you wish 4!
The myth of mummy and Santa Claus should never ever cloud the true spirit of Christmas. Amy Fernandes shares her experience
When my younger son was asked, at Sunday School, to write the names of the two most important people in his life at Christmas, he promptly wrote:
1. Santa Claus
2. Mummy
Then, perhaps, thinking of the repercussions of his admission No.2, he cancelled the second and wrote,
2. God
Okay, okay, I apologise. The myth of mummy and Santa Claus should never ever cloud the true spirit of Christmas, but try telling a five year old that! To most children, unless they are on the fast track to canonisation, Christmas is what Santa and their parents deliver. Period. And even when kids grow up and look up the elevator shaft (especially Indian kids in Mumbai who have never seen chimneys except in bakeries), wondering when Mr.Claus will turn up with his stockings, how many of us as parents have found the heart to say, “Sorry kid, there ain’t no Santa”? Even counsellors and psychologists are constantly confused and divided over the topic. Sometimes we’re told to get real. Tell them, tough luck kid, but it was your father who said ‘ho, ho, ho’ all these years. And just when we’re about to slather on some of that tough love act, there will be another school of thought going, ‘ho hum, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’
As parents we want to preserve the magic of Christmas for our children as long as we can. And then some. Because in our hearts, we haven’t stopped believing in that magic either.
Even as the ‘disillusionment’ of a Santa-less life sets in, something else takes its place. I’ve seen it happen. It normally takes place on an open ground, when the air is crisp and the strains of Christmas carols fill up the dark night. And the church bells announce the arrival of yet another Christmas. It’s yet another Christmas to you and me, but to a kid who has just learnt to let go of her Christmas stocking, the midnight mass is his or her magic ground. It’s their mystical magical rites of Christmas.
Many of us who have attended the Midnight mass know the feeling. As grown ups we’ve read enough to know that the 25th December may not be the exact date of the Infant’s birth. It might well have been on the winter solstice on the 21st December. We know that Christmas trees and Mistletoes are mere trappings of the season but these are the touchy feely aspects of Christmas. The Midnight Mass to most of us is the ‘click’ that unleashes the spirit of the season within us. It’s a spiritual hug we get from the universe. And although the temperature is dipping, and the dew is giving us a mild headache, and there is a wrong note in the choir; for god’s sake will someone throttle the fake tenor, something is welling up inside us and setting us in the mood of the moment. It is the universal idea of Christmas, whether there is snow or dust where you live, whether you’re Christian or not. The mass, the rituals, the choir, the church bells, the simple sharing of cake and coffee, and then rushing home to open the presents which everyone from the 15 year old to the 50 year old have surreptitiously placed below the Christmas tree, it’s all part of the midnight magic, for us who have outgrown the notion of Santa Claus but retained the idea of St.Nicholas.
NourishMySoul 