Diana Mahabir-Wyatt

Have you noticed that Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year?

It doesn't, of course. What starts earlier and earlier are the commercial attempts to brainwash consumers into drawing up their Christmas lists; to entice children into planning what they are going to be asking parents and caregivers for what they have been persuaded by clever advertisers that they really need for Christmas; more holidays are slated to the end-of-year bonus time; and Christmas-gift shopping becomes a budget bust if you do and a guilt trip if you don't.

Hannukah, Gita Jayanti and Kwanzaa are added to Christmas by shopkeepers to expand gift lists wider and wider. It is now "the holiday season" - marketed as a symbolic attempt to celebrate peace on earth, goodwill towards men (and women). There is even a National Housewives Day in the US.

It goes on and on, taking on a kind of quasi-handout for the poverty-stricken, who are usually given food they have trouble chewing, and you are lobbied as well by members of charitable organisations, schoolmates and religious groups (they do not have to be Christian).

Christmas has long since ceased to be a religious event, except for the usual one per cent who actually believe it is meant to remember the first Noel when the angels did sing for the birthday of the long-awaited prophet who was considered by the Roman conquerors of his birth country as unwelcome and dangerous. Which he was, of course. And along with others, as patriots, they really were trying to change their society to make it more responsive to the needs of ordinary people, so they were executed.

One of my close friends, born in Cyprus, who fought with Makarios against the British colonial power, was also called a terrorist, which I suppose he was. When the country became a democracy, he was called a freedom fighter. Don't believe "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

The Romans, hearing Jesus referred as the king of the Jews, assumed he was a political plotter. The historian Josephus reported that at that time, crucifixion was a punishment reserved for highly feared political rebels and terrorists.

On one occasion, he said, over 100 captured terrorists intent on bringing down the Roman government were crucified together, which was the way dictators frightened men who tried to take over their political power in those days.

Not much has changed in the Middle East. Osama Bin Laden and Jamal Khashoggi are examples of even more brutal political murders in our time.

Here, we are more civilised, and our freedom fighters like Messrs Shah, Lasalle and Bazie face real trials in a real court - win their cases against the State - are set free and go off to state-sponsored university to get advanced degrees and then are welcomed into senior ranks of commerce, journalism and alternative medicine when they return.

So, as society moves on and industrial relations moves from bloody riots and other forms of violence in other countries - on to strikes, go-slows and claims of sickness -