DECEMBER has come around again and two thoughts came to me. First, of course, was my wife’s birthday on the first day of the month; the other is Dec 25, Christmas.
In my column today, I wish to honour the culture of giving gifts made famous by the tradition of our Christian brethren in this country and the world.
As a boy growing up in Butterworth, Penang, Christmas was special to me because I found much excitement in buying comics like Beezer, Dandy, Beano, Topper and Whizzer which would be full of drawings of beautifully decorated trees and, most of all, lots of gaily wrapped presents.
During my school and university years, I do not recall receiving any gaily wrapped and excitingly mysterious boxes either for school awards, as birthday presents or for other occasions. So seeing people receiving and unwrapping colourful boxes of presents made me happy – and it still does, to this day.
When I had children, the tradition of giving birthday presents was sort of “forced” upon me. I never had birthday celebrations growing up but I attended a few held by my Malay, Sikh and Chinese friends.
My children, however, seemed to be growing up in this cultural context, and so I followed through. We did not really emphasise having parties but I would prioritise giving presents. And that was when I started to think about the “miracle of gift giving” as honoured in the tradition of Christmas.
I would always marvel at how people wanted to buy presents for so many other people. I mean, how do you think about what to give?
Should it be something the other person wants badly or could it be what one person wants the other to have that seems important to the giver?
This got me thinking deeply about the spiritual meaning of gift giving. Aside from the story of St Nicholas who gave away all his inherited wealth to the poor and destitute, I always wondered what spiritual lessons could be gleaned in thinking about gifting.
First, you must think of who the other person is and what would make him or her happy. The spiritual lesson there is, firstly, parting with our precious wealth that we worked so hard to gain, and, secondly, thinking deeply about the needs of another. In those two acts already there exists a strong bond of kinship in spirituality as well as an elevation of selflessness.
Another spiritual take is the idea of giving something of ourselves to another person who we know will cherish the gift, not for its utility or physical beauty but for being a piece of our “soul”.
Which part of our soul would we like to share with another person who will form a bond of love, care and honour with us?
What is the lesson here for nation-building? Why don’t we all follow the Christmas spirit of giving and pick three people outside our family who are of different races and faiths and give them a gift as a special “Christmas sharing”.
The Malays have adapted the giving of ang pow-like packets of money to children and teens. By sharing traditions like ang pow and gift-giving, we can honour each other’s faiths and cultural legacies while forging a stronger, more harmonious Malaysia.
What say we call upon the Prime Minister to lead by example and give gifts to three members of the Opposition of different races and faiths? Susah sangat kah? And we would feel prouder still if all legislators in the country were to do the same.
After that, I am sure we would not need a National Unity Ministry or a university centre for ethnic understanding spouting tables of surveys and tongue-twisting word concepts just to define the art of living together amicably.
I will start with five gifts for one Hindu and four Christian friends whom I trust with my family’s safety and fate. So this Saturday, let us all honour the Christian tradition to realise the miracle of gift-giving for our own spiritual health and well-being.
Merry Christmas to my brethren citizens!
Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
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