The woman in the shopping mall in Queens didn’t smile as she rummaged through the items on sale with discounts as high as 50 per cent.
“I have to get these things because if I don’t it wouldn’t feel like Christmas,” she muttered to no one in particular. “My daughter is going home (to Barbados) and she has to get the gifts and other things for her aunt. ”
Welcome to the spirit of Christmas, the buying, the gift giving the whole nine yards. For as United Methodist Minister on New York’s Long Island, the Rev. Laurel Scott, a Bajan immigrant, said some time ago “the spirit of giving at Christmas can be traced to God’s love for us,” meaning that it commemorates the birth of Christ
So, in keeping with the celebratory “spirit” of the season many go to extra-ordinary lengths to exchange gifts, decorate homes and herald the birth of Christ from the rafters of our churches and other places of worship and speak in tones of reverence and joy.
That’s why a drive or a stroll through the major streets of the boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx – with large Barbadian and Caribbean communities wouldn’t require a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going on.
But is that the essence of Christmas?
The Rt Rev. Don Taylor, a former Vicar-Bishop of the New York Episcopal Diocese, thinks it is but a single chapter in the Christmas story.
“Let us never forget our brothers and sisters who still live in poverty and for whom Christmas is a time of personal deprivation,” was the way he once put it in Manhattan before returning to Jamaica where he heads a large parish in Kingston, the capital city, “Many of you share what you have from the bounty of this land US with those (in the Caribbean) who have considerably less. Continue to do so for the love of Jesus Christ who did not even have a place to lay his head on the day he was born. These acts of love and generosity underscore the true meaning of this Holy Season of our Lord’s nativity.”
The Most Rev. John Holder, Archbishop of the West Indies Province of the Anglican Church, shares Bishop Taylor’s sentiment.
In a Brooklyn sermon sometime ago, the Archbishop spoke about the responsibility of mission, using the “gifts of God” to enhance the human condition. The Archbishop, who is also Bishop of Barbados, insisted “we must use our intelligence and our other resources to enhance people’s lives” to demonstrate our love for others.
That message will be the centrepiece of sermons delivered by ministers of different churches in New York, Boston, Miami, Orlando, Houston, Toronto, Montreal and other North American cities where Bajans live.
The Rev. Scott who in recent years has headed Methodist congregations in Boston, Connecticut and now Long Island cautions that Christmas shouldn’t be seen as merely an occasion to buy “things, more things and yet more things” for ourselves and for those we love, admire and cherish.
“The merchants would have us think that getting and accumulating things will make our lives happier, more comfortable; that we should feel on top of the world if we had the latest gadget, cars, the most exotic food and drink, etc., etc.,” argued the Barbadian. “But what’s vital when it comes to Christmas is love, because we Christians believe it was God’s love for the whole world that incarnated itself in Jesus of Nazareth, and it is that love that we celebrate at Christ’s mass.”
The Rev. Canon Llewellyn Armstrong, an Anglican priest for half a century in Barbados, Canada and New York, endorsed that conclusion.
“The reason for the season is to celebrate God’s unconditional and eternal love and we must remember that the love is not just for a day, not just for 12 days, but always,” said the priest.
Another thing. The Very Rev. Eddie Alleyne, a rural dean of the Episcopal Church in Brooklyn and Rector of St Gabriel’s Parish church, wants us to spread the wings of generosity to cover more than just the Christmas season.
“What we do at Christmas should be extended year-round,” he said recently. “If there is a common denominator in what the men and women of the cloth articulate in and out of the pupil it is the love of God.”
That’s certainly going to be on the mind of the Rev. Dr Sonia Hinds, a Barbadian cleric in Toronto, when she addresses congregations in Toronto where she toils in the vineyard.
“The love of God and the Almighty’s love for us are central to what we do as Christians,” she said a few months ago.