What Christmas is and is not

A joker posted on Facebook a picture of a bloody Santa Claus after getting knocked down by a car. A man is weeping over the tragedy and the caption reads: "No Christmas for me: Santa is dead!" I like the underlying message: Christmas brings more misery than joy if you really think about it. And that's only because we wait to do good and be generous around this time when we ought to do this everyday. 
    
Moreover, Christmas gifts ceased being about goodwill so long ago that there is no longer shame in demanding for them. That's why somebody will be dumped for not buying the "perfect gift!" Last Christmas a friend of mine received a brand new smart phone from his brother abroad. As soon as his girlfriend saw it, she cajoled and employed all tricks in the book to own it but failed. She then threw a 'tight' tantrum, asking my friend to choose between her and his phone.  
 

"Gifts are exchanged by people who can barely sit in the same room without suffering severe nausea," wrote a Monitor journalist in a recent article, aptly capturing the hypocrisy and superficiality associated with Christmas giving. 

Well, the optimist is saying it's high time we returned to the basics of doing it the right way. The Ugandan Police shouldn't come out now to say bars will close at 10pm on Christmas. This should be an everyday phenomenon if children are to have quality time with their parents and grow up to become responsible citizens. 

 There are also those people who are clueless about the essence of Christmas.  All they know is that from mid December until the New Year kicks in, they have to let their spirits loose and party like the world is coming to an end. "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year," they holler in deep voices they believe to be flawless replication of Santa's, and clink their glasses in multiple toasts. And on the second day of January, they are broke, heavily indebted and thoroughly restless.

 It's for this and more that we should not jump on the bandwagon. Refuse to be blackmailed into buying a gift you cannot afford. Refuse to give something if you don't want to. For Christmas is not about the hullabaloo that is rending the atmosphere already. It's about loving and sharing and being there for one another all year through.

--This was first published in the Sunday Monitor of December 23, 2012

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The ladder of happiness

A television ad shows a young man saying he would buy a ladder if he won Shs200m. At first I found the idea not just funny, but ridiculous. But I have since had to reconsider seeing he could have been speaking symbolically. Maybe the ladders are the networks he would build to take him to the top and give him the satisfaction that is elusive to most of us.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised how much I need a ladder too. I need one with huge rungs to take us (family, friends and colleagues) up the festive tree in whose branches we shall pluck the fruits of happiness and connection that we missed sharing together much of this year because of the busy-ness of our lives.

Christmas with Dad many years ago

It never used to be this way. That is why you often hear of the "good old days." Today individualism has infiltrated the hearts of men and women and taken the place of communal love so much that children no longer look to elders for meaningful Christmas. Now it is a fat, mystical creature with a freaky laugh and a long white beard that children look to. In my time we never heard of Santa. All I remember is the entire clan celebrating together with lots of eats and music and laughter whose memories sustained us to the next Christmas.

And the only way that true spirit of festivity can return is if everyone makes it a deliberate plan to bless someone; not just a family member, but a neighbour or even stranger. I learnt it does not take much during a recent visitation upcountry. I asked a boy what he wanted and he said bread. This was no milk-teethed child but a chirpy Primary Three pupil who tops his class every term. He was barefooted and in shorts that needed some mending. Yet he did not ask for shoes or some expensive toy children his age dream about nightly. He asked for bread.

I'm sure every reader of this column has the capacity to return to the village with a sack of rice or a box of soap. You would be amazed the difference a loaf of bread, a kilo of meat or sugar can make in the life of a disadvantaged individual. It could make this their best festive season. So get your ladder and help someone climb to the level of happiness never before reached. It will multiply your joy too

Giving royal love a chance

"Love is so beautiful baby when you find it you gotta cherish it yea yea..." A song like this playing on the stereo must get Prince David Wassajja singing along whereever he is! The young brother of Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi recently gave Mengo a sigh of relief after finally finding his "missing rib" in Marion Nankya who he is meant to wed early next year.

The Prince and his Marion

At only 46 and with his love in her 20s, it’s flabbergasting that the Internet is already inundated with malicious stories of how he is way too old for her, and how she doesn’t love him; that the rustle of his money and the privileges that come with royality were too alluring to resist. The implication is that the poor girl is a gold-digger and shameless opportunist. The detractors went on that she may get all the silver and gold in the world, but that she will find the Prince, who allegedly is a satyr who loves his parties and women, too hard to tame.

These speculations and prejudices that people harbour in their innermost hearts are frankly contemptible. The pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right that the Prince should be left to enjoy without people picking his private life apart and pointing discriminative fingers at his age. What if he took long to marry? Must love be harried for one’s morals to find validation?

As for Nankya, she is not the daughter of a pauper. Her father is the well-off MP for Bukoto South Hon. Mathias Nsubuga who has given his daughter a good life. Besides, she is educated, intelligent and beautiful and does not therefore need to sponge off Mengo to live a good life. Rather work harder on your own relationship and resurrect the spark, or find your own love instead of blabbering as the prince and his bride-to-be seek to be happy.

The two are certainly a perfect match. Nankya should be congratulated for 'stealing the prince's heart, and the prince should be applauded for realising it's time he settled down. With his maturity, wealth, exposure and love for a life of glitter, he will make the best husband for a modern lady as "smoking hot" as Nankya.

Also, be sure that with his alleged experiences with other women, he will not be fumbling about in the dark when it comes to intimate moments of married life. The Kabaka is assured of beautiful nieces and handsome nephews to play on his laps since Prince Richard Ssemakokiro must now be too big for that.

The power of chance in the love equation

Right now, if you ask about the most beautiful woman in the world, I might be tempted to tell you with all my heart about Ruth Komuntale Thomas, but then you do not want Christopher Thomas coming after me with an American shotgun, do you? Anyway, when the two lovebirds sighed and locked hands and gazed into each faces with amorous eyes on the day they wedded, I took stock of this thing called love and by the end had agreed with American rapper DJ Maj that 'true love is mere chance.'

Thomas and Ruth after their wedding

I can relate with that because often the people we love do not love us and the people that love us we do not love them. Yet I have seen chance take precedence whereby two strangers meet, fall in love and begin to exist together as one in marriage and happily so. And for that, it is high time our conservative society slowed down on pushing people into marriage instead of letting chance do its thing.

Someone is fresh out of school and suddenly his family is on his case to get married, or is threatened with excommunication should he marry from a certain tribe. Why hasten love when it is obvious it will always come? Man would be incomplete without it- or to put it bluntly, without a wife to make love to without feeling guilty. God was not goofing when He created them male and female, not only for procreation, but for companionship as well.

But then the world has created its own dictates about love and relationships and we are better off defying them. I have said it on this page before and I want to repeat that conformity is deformity. When you love for money or to please your parents, or when you love because time is running out, that love is bound to grow cold sooner than later and suffer the fate of salt that loses its saltiness.

This is why we must oblige that invisible force that brings together two people that are meant to be. So, instead of feeling betrayed by Komutale for marrying a 'foreigner' or instead of hating on Thomas, let us appreciate that the love they found in each other has won. They were fated to find each other.

Meanwhile, stay optimistic for someone somewhere is waiting for you. Take your risk, remembering as that famous Roman poet Ovid wrote that, "Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish."