'The Alternative Christmas Party'
‘The Alternative Christmas Party’
By William Forde
Author’s Foreword
Christmas is that wondrous time of the year when men, women and children open a new window of opportunity to their souls. It is a time when they put aside all enmity for a brief period and allow their hearts and minds to remain open, particularly towards people, customs and ideas they would not normally entertain. It is that magical time in our lives when hope for a better tomorrow can be found in the promise of a shining star. It is that time during December when the smallest amount of generosity possesses the power to soften the hardest of hearts and when the innocent happiness of children beams across their little faces in astonished wonderment as they open their presents beneath the Christmas tree.
Christmas carries with it the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth along with the secular significance of a memorable week of cheerful custom and festivities spread over the period Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day. It invariably means different things to different people and is essentially a carrier of mixed blessings, dependent upon one’s personal circumstances. If one is part of a family or group who share common goals and display deep affection towards each other, Christmas is a time to rejoice. If one happens to be alone however, with nobody to care whether they live or die, Christmas can sometimes seem better in the ignoring of its presence.
In more recent years, the religious significance of Christmas has waned and has tended to get lost within a wider society, along with a decreasing church population with no moral compass to guide it. Many Christians would today feel that Christ’s birth is often lampooned and ignored by society in general, through its focus upon eating, drinking and merriment during a gluttonous week’s holiday, along with its over-concentration on material presents that few need and most can ill-afford to buy. The one-time religious Christmas card is almost impossible to find in our stores today. There are plenty of red robins, snow pictures, plum puddings and holly scenes, but no baby Jesus to be found anywhere outside a church Nativity Crib.
‘The Alternative Christmas Party’ is set in the town of Portlaw, County Waterford in the present times of social discrimination and unpredictable religious allegiance. It is a work of fiction and tells the story of how the community of Portlaw is provided with the type of alternative Christmas they never expected after a forgetful Secretary makes, what seems on the surface, to be a minor mistake.
Text Copyright by William Forde : August, 2013.
Christmas carries with it the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth along with the secular significance of a memorable week of cheerful custom and festivities spread over the period Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day. It invariably means different things to different people and is essentially a carrier of mixed blessings, dependent upon one’s personal circumstances. If one is part of a family or group who share common goals and display deep affection towards each other, Christmas is a time to rejoice. If one happens to be alone however, with nobody to care whether they live or die, Christmas can sometimes seem better in the ignoring of its presence.
In more recent years, the religious significance of Christmas has waned and has tended to get lost within a wider society, along with a decreasing church population with no moral compass to guide it. Many Christians would today feel that Christ’s birth is often lampooned and ignored by society in general, through its focus upon eating, drinking and merriment during a gluttonous week’s holiday, along with its over-concentration on material presents that few need and most can ill-afford to buy. The one-time religious Christmas card is almost impossible to find in our stores today. There are plenty of red robins, snow pictures, plum puddings and holly scenes, but no baby Jesus to be found anywhere outside a church Nativity Crib.
‘The Alternative Christmas Party’ is set in the town of Portlaw, County Waterford in the present times of social discrimination and unpredictable religious allegiance. It is a work of fiction and tells the story of how the community of Portlaw is provided with the type of alternative Christmas they never expected after a forgetful Secretary makes, what seems on the surface, to be a minor mistake.
Text Copyright by William Forde : August, 2013.
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