The Great Christmas Day Question

We have had some trying times this year in Fiji: a devastating cyclone and a crippling drought, followed by an epic flood. But none of those calamities compares to what has befallen Fiji now. These natural disasters have been bad, terrible for those most affected, but as we know, Rome was destroyed not by disasters from without but by its own internal divisions.* What now threatens to undo the fabric of Fiji is this question: What day is Christmas?

Here is the problem. Christmas falls on a Saturday this year, and Boxing Day on a Sunday, both of which are National Holidays. But since those are days off anyway, the government gave Monday and Tuesday the 27^th and 28^th as paid holidays. A little back story here—there aren’t many employees at all in this country so most of the people who get an actual paycheck get it from Uncle Samu. The other issue is that when a military dictator tells you to jump, if you wait to ask how high, you will probably get arrested—at least they don’t do much in the way of shooting here. So, Christmas is on the 27^th…or is it?

The issue of on what day we celebrate Christmas was sort of an academic one in the village. There are no jobs so there are no paid vacations. One does what one likes, which means that no one does much of anything for the two weeks before and after Christmas anyway. Who cares what day you call Christmas? That was until someone died, and since funerals on usually on Saturday, it was scheduled for this Saturday—the day formerly known as Christmas Day. And that is where the debate started.

You see, if Christmas is on Saturday, you can’t have a funeral, but if Christmas is on Monday, Saturday is a perfect day for a funeral. The two sides lined up and the debate was on. At one point in the meeting, the pope was invoked as being in favor of Christmas on Monday the 27^th. Never mind the fact that these people are not Catholic and that I am pretty sure Benedict did not weigh in on the Fiji Christmas Question; evidently, the pope has changed Christmas to Monday. Cooler heads** spoke of the fact that everyone else in the world celebrates Christmas on the 25^th, regardless of the day of the week. That didn’t matter according to some since the government had decided the day. Ultimately, it was agreed that there would be both the celebration of the birth of the Lord and Savior and the burial of an old man on the same day (Christmas) and that the Minister would just have to be creative. Monday the 27^th will be devoted to drinking kava and thanking God that no one has a job from which to be taking a holiday.

Times like these make miss rampant materialism, gaudy, wasteful decorations, and the glorification of gluttony. Please, please give me back my American Christmas. And can it be on Saturday, December 25^th without a funeral?

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*Unless of course, it really was the result of lead-pipe induced insanity leading to an outbreak of homosexuality that invoked God’s wrathful dismantling of the Roman Empire. Seriously, that has been opined. I am pretty sure it was the two-party system and skyrocketing, war-induced debt.

**Me