Holiday thoughts

We Guyanese are very fortunate to once again experience the happy confluence of religious commemorations that reflect our rich diversity. In the midst of the Christian season of Lent, Hindus will joyfully re-enact the tradition of Holi tomorrow, and the Muslim community will celebrate Eid ul Fitr later this month.
Lent is the forty-day period observed by Christians in preparation for the Easter commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Beginning on Ash Wednesday last week, believers typically fast, pray, do penance, and give alms to generally discipline their minds and bodies and better appreciate the act of sacrifice and love by God for humanity. The three days before Ash Wednesday are also known as Shrovetide (“shrove” is an Old English word meaning “to repent”).
The custom became entrenched in many locales to “eat, drink and be merry” – to have a “last fling”, so to speak, before the austerities of Lent. Hence, for instance, Carnival in Rio and Trinidad, and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is for this reason that observant Christians were more than a little put off by the billing of our Mash celebrations as our version of “Carnival” even though it commemorates Republic Day, which falls smack in the period of Lent. We have to be a wee bit more aware of our heritages.
Eid-ul-Fitr is the Islamic festival that marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, and is celebrated with prayer, charity, and communal festivities. It occurs on the first day of Shawwal, the 10th month of the Islamic lunar calendar, immediately following Ramadan. The holiday celebrates the successful completion of a month of fasting, spiritual reflection, and devotion, and it is a time for Muslims to express gratitude to Allah for the strength and guidance received during Ramadan. It is a day of forgiveness, mercy, and gratitude, where Muslims seek to purify their hearts and strengthen social bonds. The festival emphasises thankfulness to Allah and encourages acts of charity, known as Zakat al-Fitr, to support those in need and ensure that all members of the community can participate in the celebrations.
Then, of course, there is the religious tradition of Holi, which is usually forgotten in the gaiety of the spring festivals that have become associated with it. It is as if Carnival has become Lent. Ironically the tradition is of great relevance to most modern societies. There was the King Hiranyakashipu, who was not satisfied with being the ruler of all that he surveyed in his dominion. He desired even more total and undivided obeisance. He decided that the devotions that were being offered to God ought to be directed to him. To ensure this circumstance, he deployed the might of the state to be on guard and to weed out all who may not be inclined to worship him as the Almighty.
By and by, everyone was intimidated into compliance, and the King was happy – and increasingly arbitrary – while the people became abjectly unhappy. But opposition arose from an unexpected source – from within the King’s own household – in fact, from his son and heir, Prahalad. The little boy steadfastly refused to mouth the official line and, in fact, declared to all and sundry that his father was an imposter. The real God, he declared, is immanent in all existence. Cajoling, threats and then attempts at murder, including the famous immolation in fire in the lap of his aunt Holika that gave the name to the festival, did not change the boy’s stance, and the angry King finally demanded proof of the existence of the “other” Divinity. The faith of the child, of course, was rewarded by the manifestation of the Divine, in the form of a creature half-lion and half-man, who destroyed the King.
The point for us, in these increasingly hedonistic times, is that each of our many religions assures us that there is a Divinity that supports our existence. Let us not only remember him when faced with destruction.