Letter to the Editor, Friday December 28, 2012

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.

In a community like ours, with the highest socio-economic deprivation in the country and huge disparities in social service provision, the Christmas shopping boom cannot be sustained. It is not snowing outside and Hana Koko is really a salesman preying on our love for our whanau. He has no presents for anybody, but persuades us all to pretend that he does and that we must somehow pay for it.

We need to wake up to this con; it eats away at our whanau resources and mana, using cultural icons that have been brought here from elsewhere.

This Christmas season I want to encourage our people to dig into the spiritual aspects of the festive season, and the whanau togetherness that times like these can bring.

Alcohol has historically fuelled the negative aspects of our whanau circumstances, and surely it is time for us to honestly ask ourselves whether we want to continue letting it dominate the lives of our kids. This year, let's moderate our intake, from the shopping list to the celebration party, and save ourselves money, stress and waste. We will need it all going in to the next year of worldwide economic recession.

Finally, I want to urge our people to cherish the real gift of Christmas, which is themselves. Stay safe and cool 'til after school because your whanau and your friends need you to be there for them, just the way you are. Kia kaha, kia koa kia mataara.

HAAMI PIRIPI

Chairman

Te Runanga o Te Rarawa