I have received a Christmas greeting card from a friend in Lahore. He is a good, practicing Muslim for whose sobriety and demeanor, I have nothing but utmost admiration. If the mullah of the mosque, the self-appointed custodian, judge and jury, of our much-abused religion were to know that a Muslim had been sending out Merry Christmas cards to his Muslim friends abroad, he would without any hesitation brand him a renegade, a Christian and an infidel.

Iqbal had lamented: din-e-mullah, fisad fi sabeel Allah. Persian and Urdu poetry is loaded with satires on the hypocrisy of the mullah. But, like it or not, he is in many parts of the Muslim world our imam (leader) in all prayers, including namaz-e-janaza. Fortunately, we have in the US many broad-minded, enlightened and scholarly Khateebs and imams, for instance Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi of ISNA whose informative column appears regularly in this weekly. It is a treat listening to their Friday Khutabas which carry scholarly discourses and pragmatic interpretations of Islamic laws instead of the rigid edicts of an argumentative mullah.

Discussion is, indeed, an exchange of knowledge; argumentation is an exchange of ignorance.

The Christmas card from the highly educated, scientist friend in Lahore did not surprise or offend me; instead it buttressed my view that we adopt a positive approach to Christmas celebrations in this country. The festivities are rooted in innocuous mythology. I am also not at all with people even in this country who consider Christmas to be too commercial, too strenuous financially and too devoid of any significance or direction. Be that as it may, Christmas to my mind is a thoroughly enjoyable occasion.

Thanks are due to Charles Dickens for writing “A Christmas Carol” presenting a picturesque panorama of Christmas and the spirit of charity, kindness and compassion underlying it. By far the best storyteller in English language, Dickens was unable to sell his scripts and had reached the verge of penury. He then wrote A Christmas Carol weaving a marketable myth. It was published in 1843, the very year the first Merry Christmas card was published. The myth sold. It solved his pecuniary problem and gave him the much-needed financial respite to devote his time to his other immortal novels.

Bulk of the spectacular facets of Christmas -the Santa Claus, for instance, riding in his reindeer-pulled sleigh, his sneaking into houses through chimneys to place gifts for children under Christmas trees, are indeed rooted in myths. But, what a delightful time Christmas provides to people here, with the exception of those who, following Horace’s philosophy of nil admiriri, or the narrow-minded mullah’s practice, find fault with each and every thing.

You see happiness writ large on the faces of people during the season. They would be greeting even strangers with a big smile. So many of them are out shopping for gifts for all their near and dear ones that in the shopping malls you find them bumping into each other without their smiles giving way to frowns. It is treated as the season for love and affection, of giving and forgiving, of respect and generosity.

A visit to a shopping mall, a department store or even to the neighborhood convenience store, works as a tonic to your spirit. Every thing is spec and span clean and polished, every visible space is beautifully decorated, and counters overflow with gift items.

Perfumes being much popular as gifts, the perfumes and cosmetics departments expand during the season. There would be a dozen or so perfume bottles open and available for testing. Splash your self with an expensive perfume, no eyebrow would rise, the sales girl would continue to wear a greeting smile. Thanks to the popularity of perfumes as gifts, people smell great even a couple of months after Christmas. Anything wrong with that?

No matter where you go, you find people hurrying on errands dictated by affection and consideration for others. Parents and grandparents, almost forgotten and forsaken during the rest of the year, are remembered, invited to the Christmas dinner, pampered and showered with gifts.

Evenings provide a sight for the sore eye. Houses are decorated with strings of fairy lights; lawns would be sporting lighted facsimiles of reindeers, sleighs and Santa Claus. Then, there would be in the living room of every house that glorious, cone-shaped Christmas tree with shiny decorations and dancing lights. The tree elates your spirit. Its steeple shape spires you emotionally lifting you above the earthly, mundane thoughts. The mundane, the gifts would be lying at the foot of the tree where they belong.

A green tree, as a symbol of eternal life, has been worshipped in several pagan cultures. In the Christian culture, the Germans are said to be the first to set up in their homes, in the sixteenth century, fir trees hung with apples representing the Garden of Eden. In the 19th century, German Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, is said to have popularized the custom in England. Yet neither then, nor now, anything sacrosanct is attributed to the tree; it is just a piece of decoration. A few days after Christmas, I saw a tree shorn of its decorations lying at the curb to be hauled away by the garbage truck. A dog found it suitable to lift its leg to. The lady who was walking the dog was thoroughly indifferent towards this overture of her dog. She might have even admired this choice of the dog in preference to the usual electric pole or the fire hydrant. The tree had evidently little religious significance.

The myths surrounding the celebrations woven by the fertile imagination of Charles Dickens are given little credence even by the five-year olds of this country. But the sights and sounds of the festive occasion thrill them as much as their elders. The fun and the thrills provide the spice of life and you would be well advised to enjoy the festivities instead of letting the occasion pass you by while you ponder over the hair-splitting arguments of a mullah.