Festive follies
E Te Iwi tena tatou katoa I runga I te manaakitanga o Te Runga Rawa kia tatu mai ki a tatou tona aroha noa a te wa whakataa e heke mai nei.
Well it's that time again, the time to plan, prepare, and pay for a festive season that in reality none of us can really afford. But the expectations among our families are at a high, whipped into frenzy by television, radio and retail advertising.
We have normalised the spending of our meagre resources on glorifying dead trees, covering them with false snow and decorations to help us pretend that we are actually in the Northern Hemisphere. The same pretence goes for the Pakeha New Year, which is actually the opposite of the Maori Matariki, and somehow we have become convinced that Hana Koko is the hero of our tai tamariki, the bearer of gifts, and at this time of the year we go all out to be able to afford the presents that make our children and loved ones most happy.
These days we seem to have lost any reverence for the tikanga of Christian giving and the sacredness of the belief in Christian doctrine; they have been overtaken by consumerism and the demand for huge expense in the celebration with only a few shopping days to go.
