Christmas in Hedonia – Reflections of a Muslim

Over Christmas, I’m spending some time in Hedonia. Hedonia is the capital of Hedonism – the place where desires are fulfilled. Actually to be more accurate, there are a few Hendonias, I just happen to be staying in one of them.

Well today is Christmas and someone I know treated me to a buffet meal of excellent cuisine (an eat all you want type affair).

There were some signs of Christmas around the place, some party poppers (a relatively new phenomenon of which the marketing men must be most proud), some Christmassy decorations, a few ‘Seasons Greetings’ type thingies stuck on the walls, and some dude dressed up as Santa, handing out some toys (Made in China) and there was the usual ‘leisure facility’ band singing some Christmas type songs.

While I was eating – admittedly pretty far beyond my means, the band started singing some Christmas song containing a repeated line saying something like ‘let us remember his [Jesus’] name’. Consciously thinking bout the environment, I don’t think a single person was remembering his name let alone his message/ the meaning of his life. Jesus was relegated to an amateur entertainment act; background music which that nobody was really listening to.

And it was mighty sad indeed.

The VERY last of the prophets to come (on this earth) which will mark an unprecedented and most tumultuous period of man, is being treated as an irrelevance where even the tanned Santa had more of peoples life-force attention devoted to him.

Well I was in Hedonia. What did I expect !?

This particular Hedonia is in a Muslim County, where it seems not only were the White foreign, presumed Christian tourist contingent ignoring Jesus, but the Muslims ignored him even more! I’ve written an article on Muslims attitudes to Jesus before, so I won’t repeat it, but it is very sad indeed to see the meaning of Christmas ‘doubly’ ignored.

But even in the UK branch of Hedonia, The ‘new agers’ and ‘agnostic spiritualists’ seemed to have muscled their way into Christmas too, once more elbowing out Jesus and the whole meaning of his life (and meaning of his life to come once he returns), replacing it with the ‘Good will to man’ and New Years salutations, you know, those greetings about which any thoughts/practicality/actions in that direction expire the moment the end of the catchphrase is uttered.

Earlier in the day, the ‘body beautifuls’ were parading around, leaving very little to the imagination. I am sure some of them were deliberately showing off, their impossible glossy magazine figures which surely were an advert about them that their body is their temple and that their body shape defined/provided them with their lifestyle. Yip, when I saw these Nefertiti’s I did averting my eyes, which was pretty tricky, not just because the female of the species is my strongest kind of allure, but seemingly, it was impossible to establish a new line-of-sight without some other body beautiful being in the way! – well, a bit like that anyway. Before I head off on a tangent, I was just looking at all those people and saw them standing virtually completely isolated from the purpose of their lives (i.e. to worship God). There were hundreds of them just focusing on ‘having a good time’, people for whom their holiday was an opportunity to achieve their pinnacle of joy. It was of course a joy firmly routed in the dhunya (this world) and I guessed their thought could never possibly hope to conceive of anything other than this world – or rather, that’s how I thought of them at the time anyway.

And please don’t write in saying Jesus wasn’t born on 25th December so Christmas is phoney anyway, because that’s utterly irrelevant to what I am talking about i.e. Christmas (as I have already alluded to) is about the actual significance and meaning of Jesus’ life.

I am in Hedonia(major) for a purpose and will shortly leave and head back to Hedonia(minor)

It’s been a interesting and sad day, and I know as part of Hedonia I am contributing to it in some kind of indefinable way.

Good day, and have a religious Christmas.

lwtc247