By Balwant Sanghera
Christmas is a time for families coming to-gether and promoting the message of peace, love and harmony. Recently, I had an opportunity to attend the Christmas concert/celebration at my grandchildren’s elementary school. The children seemed to be very enthusiastic and proud to put on this event for their, parents, grandparents, guestsand schoolofficials. It was a very enjoyable occasion. I would like to commend these children, their teachers and parents for putting it on. Similarly, last Friday, January 16, Richmond Multicultural Community Services (RMCS) had a very enjoyable Christmas celebration at Caring Place in Richmond.
The RMCS staff and volunteers organized a very successful Annual Christmas Potluck. They had prepared very diverse and delicious dishes to share with the attendees. A lot of sponsors had generously supported this event. A number of elected officials took the time to join us on this special occasion. As president of RMCS it was an honour for me to welcome Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, Councillors Linda McPhail, Chak Au and Bill McNulty, Richmond Steveston MLA John Yap and Richmond South Centre MLA Linda Reid as well as School Trustees Jonathan Ho and Alice Wong. All of them brought greetings to the participants.
In addition to mouth- watering dishes, the attendees were treated to lovely music and performances by Sangre Morena, Igor Vorontsov and the Gujrathi Garba Group. The children were thrilled to have their pictures taken with Santa and his gifts to them. The Raffle Prizes made a lot of participants happy as they won some impressive prizes. All in all, it was a great Christmas celebration.
Unfortunately,during the past few years, the political correctness seems to have gone too far. Sometime, people appear to be rather hesitant even to wish each other Merry Christmas. Often, they tend to substitute it with Happy Holidays. Christmas is not only a religious celebration for Christians but also a mainstream celebration. Multiculturalism doesn’t mean that we take away from our traditions but rather add to them. If we can convey greetings to each other on other religious occasions why not on Christmas? Often, minority communities get blamed for such political correctness. However, most of the time, it is certain over enthusiastic individuals/organizations from the majority /mainstream communities who get carried away and engage in this practice.
A vast majority of immigrants are very respectful of our traditions with very few exceptions.We should feel proud to wish each other Merry Christmas around Christmas time as we do for other religious occasions. Inclusiveness is one of the most cherished ideals of this nation. As such, we should make every effort to be inclusive and respectful of all of our traditions including Christmas greetings.In this context, I would like to conclude with some inspiring words from Ontario MP Michael Chong. Here is what he said about Canada:
“We have created something very special, a place where millions of people have created a different kind of society where it doesn’t matter where you came from, what your background, yourrace, religion or creedis, but rather what you aspire to be and a place where we all share a common Canadian citizenship centred around our charter rights and freedoms, our laws, our democracy. So we’ve built something here pretty special that we need to protect, but also enhance.” Celebrating our special traditions, festivals and traditions including Christmas is bound to enhance what we have.
Merry Christmas!
Balwant Sanghera is the President, Richmond Multicultural Community Services.
