In the Guardian today, Hassan bin Talal, the former Crown Prince of Jordan, commented,
We live in a world that is so charged with anger, offence and distrust that the slightest spark can set the tinder aflame. Unless we work to quell underlying hatred and to dispel misunderstanding, we risk conflagration at any moment.
This is a comment on the news about that misnamed teddy bear in Khartoum, but he could have been referring to any case of deliberate or accidental provocation within a clash of cultures, such as last week when I overheard women of three or four different national origins (only one of them born in Canada) disagreeing over the way a specifically Canadian Christmas event should be presented. The sparks were flying. Christmas is an incendiary topic: anger and distrust was in the air and offence taken on both sides. The question was, should the "Canadian" entertainment for our annual party on Friday include any items other than the usual sing-alongs in English or French, these being Canada's two official languages? Or should we encourage contributions from other parts of the world, a Christmas carol from the Ukraine, for example? What is Canadian about Ukrainian culture, some of the old hands would like to know? But there are over a million Ukrainians in Canada out of a total population of about thirty million, and since they must have brought their Christmas traditions with them, why shouldn't they be shared?
When it comes to the point, it seems there is no such thing as a "Canadian Christmas" because every possible version of it was once another nation's, and the other difficulty is that every woman's concept of Christmas is full of very personal associations. The older she is, the more they mean to her, so any deviation imposed from elsewhere causes vexation.
As Christmas gets closer and the to-do lists pile up most women's tempers tend to flare. We've got to find ways of keeping ourselves calm, because it's meant to be the season of peace and goodwill! Well, perhaps some of us here will relax a little once we get beyond Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, here's what my view from the kitchen looks like after dark at the moment. The garden's keeping cool enough—no problem.
1 comment:
Isn't it sad, all this fuss both large and small-scale ... surely the very opposite of what Christmas is supposed to be about! I shall go forthwith and put on Vaughan Williams' Hodie, to cheer myself up. Though your pretty garden picture helps, too.
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