Helping hand is the best gift of all

Helping hand is the best gift of all

Giving can cost so little and yet bring about big change in someone’s life

By Ong Sor Fern

‘Tis the season to be jolly. But what does Christmas hold besides the promise of jollity?

Although my family is not Christian, my sister’s home boasts a 2m-tall Christmas tree with all the trimmings and we are planning a Boxing Day family lunch with turkey.

The Orchard Road shopping belt is dressed in its usual seasonal finery and the malls are filled with the usual Christmas muzak. Superficially, at least, it looks an awful lot like Christmas.

But if you are not religious, it is easy to dismiss Christmas as just blatant commercialism. After all, the secular aspects of the season - the parties, the gift giving - have become as ubiquitous as the post-Christmas sales.

Growing up in sunny Singapore, Christmas has always been to me a season shorn of its traditional trappings: No snow, no fragrant pine trees, no turkey.

One could argue these are just symbols that hold more significance for Christians. But if one looked closer, one would find that the specific practices of the season have been borrowed over the centuries from different cultures.

The mistletoe, for example, has pagan origins - the druids believed the plant to be sacred. Hence it was once banned by the church which decreed holly a better substitute. Even the practice of decorating firs is an old Germanic tradition.

Even the date Dec 25 as Christ’s Nativity, it has been argued, has its roots in Roman culture. When the Roman empire was slowly converting to Christianity, December - when the winter solstice as well as the Saturnalia festival were celebrated - was chosen for Christmas so Romans could carry over some of their previous pagan practices into their new faith.

One of these practices was gift giving, which has endured to this day. Of course, all these activities - gift giving, carolling, feasting - are just frills, but they are cultural practices that have endured through time and transcended their religious associations.

Take gift giving on Dec 25. This tradition goes back to ancient Babylon and the feast of the Son of Isis. So in modern Singapore, when you play the Santa to your children or your colleagues, you are continuing a custom that dates back 4,000 years.

The persistence of such a practice has given me a new perspective on the commercialisation of Christmas. In Christmases past, I confess I was caught up in the retail whirlwind.

I got a kick out of buying things for my family and friends, imagining the look of pleasure on their faces when they received my gifts.

This year, thanks to the recession, my middle-class guilt kicked in. Being lucky enough to have stable employment, I had escaped the worst of the recession with no more than a pay cut. And as the year wore on, I began thinking more carefully about my spending: Not just in terms of saving more, but also spending more wisely.

So I donated a modest amount to an arts group I believed in. Having moaned for long about how we do not do enough to support the arts, I finally did more than just buy tickets to shows.

Then one morning, I saw a BBC news report about Women For Women International, a non-profit organisation that helps female victims of war. Its programmes in African and European countries teach women basic vocational skills, and offer them micro-credit loans to help them start businesses.

I visited www.womenforwomen.org and signed up to sponsor a woman. What amazed me was how little it cost to make a difference in another human being’s life: just $38.57 a month. For less than what I spend on a pair of shoes, I could help a girl in Kosovo get training and pay for medical care for her family.

I know very little about my ’sister’, as the organisation calls her. But I know that although her family lives in a house with electricity, they have to rely on a well for water and they cannot afford medical care. And I know that my 19-year-old ’sister’, though literate, is unemployed because there are no jobs available in Kosovo.

It made me feel good to be able to help someone halfway around the globe. Instead of feeling helpless and numbed by the endless run of depressing news about global poverty, it was a pleasure to be doing something, no matter how small.

Corny as it sounds, giving to Women For Women International has also made me realise how blessed my life has been.

The Christmas gift catalogue the organisation sends has a list of gifts ranging from Teach A Woman To Read for US$50 (S$70) to a sewing machine for US$75; from okra seeds for US$15 to a carpenter’s tool kit for US$25.

I look at this list and think of the meaning these gifts will hold for the recipients. The objects may seem modest, practical, even dull, to us. But for some women in the Congo or in Bosnia, they are quite literally, lifelines.

That, to me, is the best thing anyone can bestow: To offer another human being a helping hand. And that is the real meaning behind gift giving: It is a symbolic extension of generosity and humanity. That perhaps explains why the custom is so enduring and is often associated with religious holidays.

So there may be a good reason to celebrate how this one particular Christmas practice has become secular. Instead of complaining about how commercial the season has become, I am going to buy someone a bag of seeds and wish her a Merry Christmas.

Source : Straits Times - 25 December 2009

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