All I want for Christmas
The loaves and the fishes have nothing to do with load shedding and other Christmas conundrums.
IF I were six, or 80, that old chestnut of a song, All I want for Christmas is my two front Teeth, would be appropriate.
But I am neither, so while I still hang on to my pearly whites, I have compiled my own Christmas list to share.
First up must be an appeal to the ANC candidate in the Pinetown by-elections to please remove his posters on Cowies Hill. They have turned a lurid pink and are most unbecoming.
Is it necessary to remind him of the council’s rules on the removal of election posters? But then, their tatty presence is no surprise seeing there is the beaming visage of the president on election posters on lampposts in Sarnia.
Perhaps we need to remind the municipality on its rules about election posters. Will these comrades be fined, I wonder?
Then a request to the Parks Department. A Christmas wish if you will. When cutting my verge, (yes, very nice, thank you), must you check the lethal efficiency of your grass cutters on my dainty indigenous freesias, gallantly blooming bright red in my outside garden bed?
Their mutilated petals and leaves reduced me to tears on my return from work. The puzzle though is that there was no grass in that area to cut, only paving, so what were you doing there, and was this massacre deliberate? I hope not.
To the Go! Durban, bus upheaval people. Please hurry up and complete this excessively expensive exercise. I don’t know how much longer, Pinetown commuters can take the anarchy which reigns on our streets.
And while on the subject and to mention for the umpteenth time, Metro Police, please sort out the scurrying to and fro and jaywalking outside the Pinecrest Centre. There are pedestrian crossings which no one uses, and someone is going to die there. Some control please.
And then, If I may be so presumptuous, I have a favour to ask of the president.
Please credit the people of this country with a little bit of intelligence, or were you joking, when you said load shedding must be laid at the door of apartheid?
Yes, the previous regime was downright mean and racist and only supplied electricity to white areas, but surely the brains trust of the present government could have foreseen the requirements, in terms of supply of power stations, to match the demand for electricity. This is not the loaves and the fishes we are talking about.
The last on the list is a sensitive one but it must be said. I notice, with much sadness, that the word ‘Christmas’ is slowly being erased from this celebration.
The Americans have removed any religious significance from Christmas and call this season “holidays”,(which by the way means Holy Day).
My, they need to find a more secular word! Happy Holidays is the preferred greeting, and a Facebook post claimed that the American president’s family had decorated the holiday tree.
It is my opinion that this is political correctness gone mad. And when I heard little children, here in our own city, sing “We wish you a merry holiday”, my heart hurt. As South Africans we need to celebrate our diversity and the holy days and customs of each religion without anaesthetising and sterilising any of them.
To all our readers, Merry Christmas, and a new year filled with calmness, kindness and kinship.
