Let's welcome our festivals!

Susantha HEWA

Christmas is already here. Shops are being crowded and people are getting reckless with their purses. The schools have been closed for the year-end vacation and the streets are teeming with whole families getting ready for Christmas.

In fact, it is the bustle in the shops, animated movements, din of the pavement hawkers, an eager face of a child and the incessant hubbub that make the run-up to any festival its most exciting phase.

Though some of us may be skeptical about festivals, they should be there to ease the pace of life. True, the mood of festivity is in part created by the spirit of entrepreneurship of our business community. They contribute in a large measure to uplift our acquisitive mindset. It's the ribbons, buntings and coloured lights that keep us buoyed up. The glamour makes us feel bad, if we don't join the shoppers. However, despite the commercial aspect, a festival always brings welcome change to our mundane life.

Those who are more sober might say that we long for festivals because we are bored with life and that they give us only a temporary escape. However, it's not everybody who can derive pleasure in austerity. The majority of us need a joyous break. Of course, tragic events do break the monotony of life but nobody enjoys such unwelcome shocks. Therefore, all cultures have created their own devices to have a happy jolt once in a way. After all, your life is what you remember most. Its main elements are those fond moments and those unavoidable tragic moments. We need regular doses of cheerfulness to counter the instances of doom and gloom. As we know, both language and music become intelligible and meaningful only because of silences embedded in between sounds. The same rule applies to life.

Though it may sound paradoxical, it will bore us to death if the whole life is a nonstop gala. We need a sense of pressure to keep us going. People may complain of having too much work, but abundant leisure and freedom would create not joy but bottomless desolation. A festival has a centripetal force.

It brings people together across all societal boundaries. As we are living in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, Christmas, Sinhala and Hindu New Year and Vesak among others are events that bring a spark of joy to all, irrespective of race or religion.

A materialistic society which makes man revere productivity, efficiency and competitive spirit needs a few days every year to break the spell of that hardness of spirit which is at the core of all individuals. In our routine life we are taught to be hard bargainers, tough nuts. Everyone is obsessed with pretending to be smarter than one is. That's what we get paid for, whatever our vocation is. A festive mood would soften even the most plain-speaking and hardboiled Company executive. Festivals are annual humanizing program hosted by our cultures!