With the Christ­mas sea­son up­on us, a vig­or­ous world­wide de­bate has erupt­ed about the rel­e­vance of the many pre-Christ­mas ac­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the birth of Je­sus Christ, the sav­iour of the Chris­t­ian world. Busi­ness and trade have trans­formed what was once a deeply re­li­gious oc­ca­sion in­to one of shame­less com­mer­cial ex­cess.

Go­ing to church, singing car­ols and at­tend­ing to the needs of the poor have been over­shad­owed by an end­less cal­en­dar of par­ties and fetes. Bac­chus, the god of in­tox­i­ca­tion, seems to be the pre­sid­ing de­ity for the en­tire month of De­cem­ber.

Yet Chris­t­ian devo­tees in the Unit­ed King­dom, Eu­rope, the Unit­ed States and across the world are push­ing back, in­sist­ing that Christ be brought back in­to Christ­mas. We see tele­vi­sion im­ages of the faith­ful de­mand­ing that large con­sumer con­glom­er­ates re­turn the fo­cus to what the sea­son tru­ly means.

The im­por­tance of Christ to Chris­tian­i­ty—cel­e­brat­ing his birth, death and res­ur­rec­tion—has been cen­tral to the tra­di­tion for more than a thou­sand years. Hin­du scrip­tures, too, out­line the qual­i­ties of dif­fer­ent kinds of lead­ers, in­clud­ing spir­i­tu­al ones.

Do­ing the right thing is not al­ways easy. That is one of the lessons of Christ’s life, just as it was the mes­sage Lord Kr­ish­na im­part­ed to Ar­ju­na on the bat­tle­field of Ku­ruk­shetra. The Ksha­triya spir­it re­quires a leader to put the peo­ple he serves above his own self-in­ter­est; to de­fend caus­es, fight for prin­ci­ples, and pro­tect oth­ers.

This is the essence of true lead­er­ship. It is the mes­sage of Christ­mas—Christ act­ing to save mankind. It is al­so the mes­sage of Lord Kr­ish­na, who took avatar to ex­pel evil from the world.

Christ­mas, there­fore, re­minds us of Kr­ish­na, who sym­bol­is­es Aryad­har­ma—the no­ble way—em­body­ing the Ksha­triya spir­it of fight­ing fear­less­ly for a bet­ter coun­try, no mat­ter the sac­ri­fice re­quired. Hin­duism and oth­er world re­li­gions share many sim­i­lar­i­ties, in­clud­ing the moral per­son­al­i­ties of Christ and Kr­ish­na.

The spir­it of Je­sus Christ was re­flect­ed in his deeds. He was com­pas­sion­ate, con­cerned for the poor, and in­tol­er­ant of the abuse of pow­er. Moral re­new­al, based on right­eous ac­tion, is the key to sal­va­tion. His King­dom of Heav­en is the abode of the right­eous—not mere­ly those who re­pent af­ter do­ing wrong. Hin­dus, dur­ing this Christ­mas sea­son, can ful­ly un­der­stand Christ’s mes­sage.

To­day, Christ­mas has evolved in­to two dis­tinct cel­e­bra­tions. One be­longs to Chris­tians who ob­serve the birth of Je­sus. The oth­er has be­come sec­u­lar, steadi­ly erod­ing any men­tion of the sea­son’s Chris­t­ian ori­gins. It has be­come a pe­ri­od when mer­chants fo­cus on Black Fri­day and Cy­ber Mon­day in a fi­nal at­tempt to prof­it be­fore year’s end—fu­elling over-spend­ing, over-eat­ing and over-drink­ing, and leav­ing many to lament the true mean­ing of Christ­mas.

If we are to bring Christ back in­to Christ­mas, spir­i­tu­al and ser­vice-ori­ent­ed ac­tiv­i­ties must take prece­dence. The fo­cus should be on faith, fam­i­ly, mu­sic, mean­ing­ful films, church ser­vices and acts of giv­ing rather than re­ceiv­ing.

Many fes­tive cus­toms may be re­li­gious and oth­ers sec­u­lar, but there is lit­tle doubt that count­less tra­di­tions have been shaped by cen­turies of com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, which has made the hol­i­day so wide­ly pop­u­lar. Christ­mas to­day is an amal­gam of cul­tur­al tra­di­tions blend­ed with mass mar­ket­ing and pop­u­lar cul­ture.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we cel­e­brate through­out De­cem­ber, in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in lun­cheons, staff par­ties and oth­er events. This is ac­cept­able when we can af­ford it, but it be­comes fool­hardy—even pig-head­ed—when we in­sist on main­tain­ing such spend­ing in dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times.

Are we be­ing rea­son­able when we pri­ori­tise ex­trav­a­gant par­ties in­stead of di­rect­ing funds to the poor and needy? Do we pre­fer to drink and fete at the work­place rather than al­low fam­i­lies the fi­nan­cial breath­ing room to spend mean­ing­ful time to­geth­er? What mes­sage are we send­ing to our young peo­ple dur­ing this pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic strain?

As a so­ci­ety, we must dis­tin­guish be­tween self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion and the search for mean­ing and pur­pose that un­der­pins our abil­i­ty to en­gage in com­plex so­cial and cul­tur­al be­hav­iour—rather than sim­ply pur­su­ing plea­sur­able ex­pe­ri­ences.

In oth­er words, there is no use­ful pur­pose in spend­ing mil­lions to “wine and jam” while our hos­pi­tals lack beds and prop­er fa­cil­i­ties, and while so many cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to live with­out ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties such as wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and ad­e­quate hous­ing.