Tommy Wilson: Goodbye to Year of the Greedy

A jewellery shop's inflatable roosters resembling Donald Trump greet customers in Nanjing as China welcomes the Year of Rooster. Photo/Getty Images

There's nothing like a bit of opium to loosen one's grip on an atheist based country, especially when your loyal subjects are starting to veer off course and look at what the Christian concept of Christmas is all about.

According to the ruling communist party in China, Christmas equates to mental opium from the West and should be avoided at all costs.

This coming year is the Year of the Dog in Chinese culture and while many Chinese will be still crowing from the Year of the Rooster in 2017, others will be silently celebrating Christmas with gifts and good will, in the same way we have just done here in the land of the long Boxing Day shopping line.

What is interesting about opium in either its physical or mental state is that it is the perfect painkiller and, for many, the year that has just walked on by has had plenty of pain sewn into its annus horribilis hemline.

Well, it has for this half-caste hippy hack when I look back on 2017.

If 2017 was the Year of the Rooster then there was bugger all to crow about in my little corner of the world other than Mamas Donuts coming to town and Somerset Cottage still serving the best kai on the planet.

For me, the dogs were let loose a year early and, to coin a Bitcoin buy line, things were going to be bigger, brighter and better off if we just trusted those who had their hands on the purse strings.

Somehow, I don't think so, and only those at the top of the table in Trump Towers will take the cream, as will those who have cornered the Bitcoin market. The rest of the dog-eat-dog world will be left with sour milk, with the poor getting poorer and the tower of power getting taller.

If ever there was a year of the greedy then surely it was the one just gone.

Financially, environmentally, economically, culturally and spiritually, we have taken a huge hit as a planet, and the chances of this year being any better are about the same odds as Dirty Dennis winning the next America's Cup or Don Brash being guest of honour at the next Waitangi weekend.

Chances are is it's going to be a bit of a bumpy ride so hold on to your hat and hairpiece - or someone who is wearing one.

With the two class clowns way up north in Korea and way down south in the not so United States shooting off everything and anything at each other, something or someone will step across the no-go zone.

I guess we will have to crouch and hold and see who engages first, like a front row in a test match.

Here in the land of the Labour-led Government, there is an aura of excitement as a korowai of hope has been laid down for those who have been trodden on for far too long to walk across and out of poverty.

Just like the followers of the faithful who witnessed what happened when Jesus stepped on to the planet, there is a new baptism of belief among the give a littlies of this world and, although it will be a photo finish to see who wins the war on greed,

I have my money on the mania's getting their just deserts, and the rest of us getting what the world needs - not what it wants.

We can't change what the crazies are doing in Korea or in the new capital of Jerusalem, nor can we curb the chaos in the north of Africa or take away the pain caused by the almost daily acts of terrorism, but we can help clean up our own backyard here in Aotearoa

For me, it starts and finishes with giving until it hurts. If ever we are going to win the war on greed then we have to fight it here before we try to fix a broken world.

If we are to silence the barking dogs and put a muzzle on poverty here in the bay that has plenty, it will take a lot more than a few cans of food at Christmas to fix up the homeless and helpless crisis we are facing.

Christmas is the perfect kick-start to kindness and now we need to carry it on for the other 51 weeks of the year by giving a little to those who have a lot less than we do.

If I were to choose a Chinese character to symbolise the upcoming year, I would go for the turtle.

A clever fulla, I think he was Confused, or his brother Confusedish, once said: "Observe the turtle - he does not move until he sticks his neck out."

Let's find some fun in 2018 and give a little more than we did last year.

Broblack@xtra.co.nz Tommy Kapai is a best selling local writer