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This
is a rant about Christmas
His
Bigness
Fasi Zaka
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For
some people the arbitrariness of deciding a predetermined date
to enjoy themselves seems absurd. Like New Year's Day, Halloween
or Valentines. But those people are in a minority, most people
don't have a guilt complex when they are asked to unwind.
This year in Pakistan Christmas was big, at least in the major
metropolitan areas. It became an excuse to extend the party
season for a whole week from the 25th to the New Year.
That's ok, nothing wrong with people enjoying themselves. But
the narrative should be half way honest at least. Pretending
that it has something to do with the pluralism of being one
with the minorities of the country is a joke.
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Tell
that to your sweeper. It should be enough to set him or her off on
a fatal attack for the jugular of the person who suggests that this
somehow has something to do with them. After all what does your sweeper
have in common with a party full of libations, a dance floor and a
party budget that exceeds his or her annual pittance of a salary?
Upper
class Christmas in Pakistan is an expropriation of customs that have
already become secularized by the agnostic consumerism of the West.
Mistletoe is a good way to get a little action, the decorations just
another theme that take the place of extravagantly setting your pad
along the lines of a flamenco club.
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| It's
interesting to see that spawn of the advantaged find
Eid boring now.
Obviously it will be if the sole aim is to get wasted; it comes with
religious obligation and ritual. It's hard to worm in joints and intoxicated
dancing into that mix.
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But
it's the same situation on Christmas for most of the Christians in
the country. Forget that they hug the poverty line closer than the
rest of the country, they too have a religious obligation on that
day.
This has the making of what happened in the UK. The British reactionaries
will happily take the cuisines of the immigrants but unwelcome a process
of amalgamating the culture into enriching their own.
It's akin to saying "Give us your curry, and hold the culture".
Sure enough, reactionaries in Pakistan are the same. While the elite
appropriate Christmas to party, the reactionaries don't see the adoption
of Christmas as essentially a secular process of extending the time
remit for organized hedonism.
The
reactionary elements (mostly middle class) actually believe that the
celebration of Christmas is evidence of cooption into another religion,
which it is anything but.
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objection isn't primarily the partying (though it is of major concern
to them) but the use of the greeting "Merry Christmas".
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They believe it means that (paraphrasing) "Have a happy time
celebrating the birth date of the Son of God", which is of
course the main theological contention between Muslims and Christians.
Who on earth actually thinks that when they wish someone a Happy
Christmas? The phrase is more innocuous the reactionaries suggest:
its just a greeting. But from this argument the real attempt is
to marginalize any interaction with the Christians on common ground.
After all, we are ok with the Christians using "Assalam-O-Alaikum"
even though they do not subscribe to the source code of the greeting.
In some ways (admitted with great reluctance) it seems that the
elite's preoccupation with Christmas is actually less insidious
than that of the middle class.
Elite partying is something that the minorities will hardly ever
know of, or even get to see. But middle class reactionaries focusing
on the battle ground of culture creating exclusion is something
dangerous, so them a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a wonderful
Eid. |
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