Christmas

In our Western World, around this time of year most people are getting ready to celebrate Christmas. Houses are decorated, Christmas baking is abundantly prepared, a carton of eggnog sits in the fridge and friends and family gathered together to celebrate. To them Christmas is considered a special occasion to give gifts to those they love, showing a temporal benevolence over the holiday season. For most it’s a time to go out of the way for family and friends and a time for celebration. It’s a festive season to relax with time off work or school and a time to visit warmly with loved ones.


In its commercial sense, Christmas is just a time for fun and play, rest and relaxation, rather than a time to honour God and celebrate Christ and a time to truly give to those who need, by going the distance to help others. Christmas is anything but a time of fidelity or a time for benevolence for most. It is a time to lavish ones self in the carnal pleasures of ignorant bliss; a time to forget your worries and the problems of the World to just indulge and enjoy. But is this what Christmas is really about?


To the Messianic follower of Christ, Christmas is considered a season no different than any other, for we are meant to be worshiping God and celebrating Christ through living in Messiahship in all our waking hours, all year long. To those who truly follow Christ, the coming of Christmas doesn’t add a fresh spark of vitality to the stagnant heart filled with lukewarm placidity, for you should be already shining at your zenith, as a follower of the Messiah, empowered to live at your best. You don’t wait for a special occasion to worship God and honour Christos; you are already living to seek the glory of God in all of its manifestations.


Since Christmas is the only time of year some people even consider giving in generosity, we need to become radically benevolent and truly bless our neighbours. We need to take this time to give to the needs of the unfortunate and to truly be extra thankful for what we have been blessed with by God’s grace. There are many in the world suffering in what can be considered a pit of hell on Earth and one of the greatest gifts you can give on Christmas is mercy to the innocent suffering in some of the worst conditions imaginable. Give this Christmas to those who are especially in need of humanitarian aid and provide them with some hope in life.


Sadly Christmas is an exploited time of mass consumerism. This highly commercialized season is a time to indulge. Many ignore God over the holidays because they are too caught up in drinking, eating and treating themselves to comfort and luxury. A largely proclaimed time of giving, Christmas however doesn’t even seem to scathe our world’s neediest people’s infliction of poverty. Christmas helps few living in extreme poverty, because our people are too caught up in worldly possessions for themselves and only those they care about, rather than giving a damn about the essential basic necessities of the millions of malnourished people living in poverty all over the world.

According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people all over the world die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes. That’s about one person every three and a half seconds. Unfortunately, it is young children who die most often. Most likely you’ve seen the Make Poverty History commercials, where all the celebrities are snapping their fingers every 3 seconds to symbolize an innocent child dying of preventable causes. Efforts like this raise global awareness, shining a spot light on these important issues, but not enough is being done and the plight of poverty increases every year.

There is plenty of food in the world for everyone to share, but because people on one side of the world horde excess wealth, people on the other side of the world go hungry. Hungry people are trapped in a vicious cycle of severe poverty and death. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.


Here are some definitions of poverty as defined by the World Bank.


Definitions of Poverty

Extreme (or absolute) poverty: Living in extreme poverty (less than $1 a day) means not being able to afford the most basic necessities to ensure survival. 8 million people a year die from absolute poverty.

Moderate poverty: Moderate poverty, defined as earning about $1 to $2 a day, enables households to just barely meet their basic needs, but they still must forgo many of the things-education, health care-that many of us take for granted. The smallest misfortune (health issue, job loss, etc.) threatens survival.

Relative poverty: Relative poverty means that a household has an income below the national average.

Based on these definitions established by the World Bank, nearly 3 billion people, half of the world's population, are considered poor. That is immense scores of men, women and children, enduring unimaginable obstacles that prevent them from fulfilling their most basic human rights, preventing them from living a quality life and often leading to death.


Some significant statistics on poverty and inequality:

Each year, more than 8 million people around the world die because they are too poor to stay alive.
Over 1 billion people—1 in 6 people around the world—live in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1 a day.
Currently over one billion people lack access to a basic supply of clean water and 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation.
Unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation play a major role in the transmission of diseases including Malaria, Cholera, Diarrhea, and Typhoid. More than 1.8 million children die each year, roughly one child every 15 seconds, from water and sanitation-related Diarrhoeal diseases.
More than 800 million go hungry each day.
Over 100 million primary school-age children cannot go to school.
The world's 225 richest people now have a combined wealth of $1 trillion. That's equal to the combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorest people.
UNDP calculates an annual 4 percent levy on the world's 225 most well-to-do people (average 1998 wealth: $4.5 billion) would suffice to provide the following essentials for all those in developing countries: adequate food, safe water and sanitation, basic education, basic health care and reproductive health care.
The wealth of the three richest individuals now exceeds the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries.
In 1998, the 20 percent of the world's people living in the highest-income countries accounted for 86 percent of total private consumption expenditures while the poorest 20 percent accounted for only 1.3 percent.
At present, 3 billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women.
In 1948, the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaiming that all people have the right to education, work, health and well-being. Yet today, millions around the world are too crippled by poverty to fulfill these basic rights. Millions continue to go hungry. Scores of children never step inside a classroom. Families watch their loved ones die from largely preventable causes because they do not have access to adequate medical care. In essence, poverty is a denial of human rights.