First of all a Merry Christmas to all, I hope you get wonderful presents and your family will enjoy this lovely day of fun, festivities and food!

Now really I am the kind of person who sits and thinks about things quite deeply, too deeply as a matter of fact because alot of times I find myself up late at night trying to reason out simply little things in life. Over the years people have been debating that Christmas is no longer Christmas. The commercialisation of the holiday season makes people forget the true meaning of the season and that meaning is the celebration of the birth of christ (not the day of the actual birth of christ to all you jehovah's witnesses out there).

As a day of celebration of the birth of the saviour of the world - or well the Christian world, other religions would say otherwise (and I try to not be centered on my beliefs in my writings), it is expected that people would take this day to remember all the good things that we currently have: life, liberty, freedom, and the ability to repent in the name of Christ (said saviour of the world) and have God save a special seat in heaven for you in the afterlife. This day truly should be one of celebration; celebration of being alive; and celebration of having the opportunity to have a happy afterlife.

However over the years we have seen a decreasing amount of focus on the celebration of Christ's birth, and an increase in the influence of Santa Claus in the christmas season. I mean I am not even hearing the Christmas story much on the radio or the TV today... you know with the three wise men and all that? Instead I can almost tell you all the stores that are currently having christmas deals and I could possibly tell you what items the deals are on. I can even remember line for line the jingles for companies like Digicel, and Claro who's christmas promotions run for what seems to be hours on end without stop.

Is this enough however to say that Jamaica has gone to the "dark side" and given up on the Christian christmas and instead focuses on the "secular" christmas? In my opinion, no. For every person I have seen walking around shopping I have heard of people with plans for going to church on christmas day, giving to charities etc. While I wont deny, the focus on Christmas for Christmas sake (christ's mas) has dwindled slightly, it hasnt gone as bad as to say that we have lost the meaning.

I'm going to go cook now. Christmas dinner is coming up and I get to see some family I havent seen in a while

Merry Christmas again readers

and Happy Holidays to all my other religious or non-religious readers