DESPITE THE debt "bombshell" here at home and the war clouds gathering in the Middle East, Christmas takes centre stage this week. As usual this ancient religious festival will wear secular trappings of feasting and merry-making as the most dominant feature; and as usual the truly devout will nonetheless strive to maintain the spiritual core of worship and prayer, celebrating the birth of the Christ.
In this nominally Christian country, principles of religious freedom enable tolerance of the other great religions. Even so we may feel remote from the paradox of belief systems fuelling ancient hatreds that still foment modern wars between nations.
Yet even within Christianity itself ecumenism is yet to achieve its aim of uniting a wide variety of denominations and sects.
Such matters in the realm of philosophy will hold less sway than the mundane preoccupation with material things in the shopping frenzy leading up to Christmas Day.
Thus elsewhere in this edition we report on the latest shopping activity both uptown and downtown where the street vendors have a temporary respite from the pressure to relocate them.
Even while the shopping we describe wears all the hallmarks of hard-edged commercial exchange, there is a redeeming feature in the traditional shopping. Many will shop for family and friends - and also for the anonymous indigent normally shut away in some remote institutions.
It is this quality of Christian charity that somehow redeems the crass commercialism of the Yuletide season. It reinforces the time-worn peace greeting even though the wish bears constant repetition and hopeful renewal.
The reminders will sound from church worship later this week when congregations sing the famous 1850 hymn by Edward Hamilton Sears, 'The Angels Song' - 'It came upon a midnight clear... that glorious song of old...Peace on the Earth, goodwill to men...'
