Smell, Feel, Taste – Christmas is Personal

by hazelelponiSC · December 22, 2017

At Christmas retailers bombard us with catalogues for gifts — from cheap trinkets to bottles of booze that cost as much as a car. KARIN HUMAN looks at what Christmas really means to her.

What is it that makes the festive season special for us? When exactly is it that things start to feel “Christmassy” for you? Is it at that point when the first retail giant starts playing “Jingle Bells” while you shop for your usual monthly items?

Is it two weeks later when the next retail giant unpacks six aisles of Christmas trees, tinsel, cards, baubles, singing reindeer and jovial bell-ringing Father Christmasses? Is it when you find yourself irritated by the advert on TV, in August, about everyone telling Father Christmas their wishes for Christmas (none of which are non-retail items)?

Perhaps it is because I am getting older, perhaps now that my last child has written his final matric exam, I don’t see the retail wonder. Perhaps it is because I feel myself growing more and more concerned about the loss of the word “Christ” in Christmas.

Be Discerning in your Gift-Giving

There are four retail giants in particular who each publish a 100-plus page full-colour Christmas booklet, filled from start to finish with gifts, gifts, gifts and more gifts. Cheap items, costly items, it is all there. Page after page of buy me, buy me, buy me.

A local bottle store produced what can only be called a glossy Christmas magazine of their offers for the festive season. In it was a bottle of booze that costs R250000. A quarter million rand for a bottle of alcohol, I ask you!

In this economic climate, with our credit rating plummeting, people starving on the streets, families battling to make ends meet, I find it rather tacky to publish something like that.

Of course, there are people who can afford it, still, you do not see Mercedes Benz splashing their price all over their adverts. And people who can spend such an obscene amount of money on a bottle of alcohol surely do not need an A4 colour advert to persuade them.

And do not even get me started on the 63-page toy catalogue I’ve seen. What are we teaching our children?

I have two kids. Both of them are young adults now but, like all young adults, they were small not too long ago. We bought them stuff, and we had lots of presents under the tree.

However, we tried to be discerning. You can give a lot of little gifts and one special “big” one. More importantly, at the same time we taught them about the Mass, the meaning of Christmas and consideration for those less fortunate.

This year we have been attending the “Carols by Candlelight” at CBC Mount Edmund in Pretoria, my children’s school from Grade 0 to matric. That was preceded by a market for Christmas items — not toys and stuff, but Christmas items. My daughter and I had a table with Catholic items such as Advent prayer books, Bible diaries, Nativity scenes and such.

What Christmas Means to Me

I realised today what Christmas is to me: it is the carols, the specific smell of incense in the church around Christmas, the parish’s tree with the tags from children at the Childhood Cancer Foundation’s and the elderly at Holy Cross Home (giving parishioners a chance to take a tag and buy a gift for that person).

Christmas is putting up the banner in the parish with the Christmas Mass times. It is packing out our nativity scene at home, carefully keeping baby Jesus one side until the right time. It is the smell of mince pies and Christmas cake, and the time spent making them.

Christmas is the special table my mom prepares for us on Christmas Eve, and her Christmas biscuits which she lovingly makes at this time. It is the fact that our family sits and listens to “Silent Night” every year before we have dinner or open gifts — a 50-year tradition.

Christmas is that we set a limit on the amount we spend on siblings and grandparents for gifts, and we all stick to it. It is all that we set aside at this time of year for those less fortunate than us.

Christmas is the taste of gingerbread and marzipan. It is a time of joy. A time of wonder. A time of waiting once again for a breath-taking story and event.

That’s Christmas. Put away the catalogues. Stop saying “Happy Holidays”. It is Christmas.

Smell it, feel it, taste it. It is not a purchase. It is a feeling of great warmth and joy.

Karin Human is the secretary of Christ the King church in Queenswood, Pretoria