Even At Christmas

The other day at the supermarket, a frisky teenager cut in the line at the checkout counter while the rest of the customers patiently waited for their turns. Heads turned to the young man, who didn’t seem to have any clue that he’d done something wrong. Everybody else looked at one another in mutual protest.

The elderly woman right behind the young man poked a finger on his shoulder, openly scolding him for his lack of manners. It was not fair what he did, the woman pointed out. The young man’s face turned red in utter embarrassment as soon as he noticed the others in waiting.

The teenager meekly apologized to everybody, swearing he didn’t notice the queue. I believed him; the young man was probably just in a hurry and didn’t notice the line nor did he actually intend to be unfair to the other customers. Instead, I thought that the woman’s scolding him was not fair; she could have simply called the young man’s attention in a nice way.

I can’t really blame the woman for blowing up, though. When people think that others are being unfair to them, the natural reaction is to get hurt or angry. Their view of others’ actions determines their reaction.

As we now move closer to Christmas, everybody seems to be in a hurry. The yuletide rush has certainly begun. Those who have already received their yearend bonuses are becoming restless. Even workers who may not get anything extra at all than their usual meager pay pretend to be in abundance, too.

By this time the sumptuous fare for the noche buena is probably already being planned. Food is traditionally at the center of the celebrations at home. Thus, the Christmas dinner is usually prepared with the favorites of family members and close friends in mind.

Christmas is basically a home event. Our most memorable Christmases are those we spent with family and friends. Even those among us who preach that this merry season is a time for goodwill and compassion to everyone perhaps only share kindness and cheers with people already close to their hearts.

Our noche buena plans don’t necessarily include those people sleeping on the sidewalks whom we’ll pass by on our way home from the midnight Christmas Mass. When we cheerily open our Christmas gifts our minds are not likely to wander to elsewhere in the country or the world where thousands of victims of wars and calamities grimace in suffering. To the great majority of us, Christmas is a joy that we claim only for ourselves.

It’s true that many of us strive to attain a certain degree of fairness in our personal and social lives. Fairness is as much the stuff of our religious beliefs as of our societal principles. But that’s as far as it goes; our sense of fairness hardly extends beyond the human circle.

I wonder if animal rights advocates stand as firm in their cause at Christmastime as they do at other times. Will they pass off on everybody’s favorite lechon (roasted pig) at the noche buena table? It doesn’t seem fair for the pig to end up in our stomachs; the poor creature probably deserves our compassion, too.

They’re only pigs, we’ll say. Pigs are raised purposely to become human food. But how does if look from the point of view of the pig? Is it fair that we humans fill our hunger at the expense of the life of our fellow creatures?

There’s really no absolute standard of fairness yet established, and probably never will be. In fact the idea of fairness is simply a matter of interpretation, an abstraction, a personal ideal. The laws and social moral codes of the world are merely an attempt to promote peaceful co-existence among members of the human community.

We are supposed to act in a manner that takes into account the feelings and interests of our fellowmen, in the sense that a person may conduct himself in any way he wants so long as he does not cause any harm or discomfort to others. His actions are presumed fair, until a grievance is raised against it.

And yet, given our collective recklessness and wastefulness we are not being fair with this very planet that sustains human life. It does not make us any less guilty simply because this victim never cries out in protest of our abuses. Instead, we claim to be the victims when nature and the environment unleash the backlash of our wrong deeds.

The truth is there’s so much unfairness going on in life. We do not always get our fair share. At one time or another, we get accused of a wrong we didn’t do or subjected to cruelty we don’t deserve. At one time or another, we act mercilessly to those who actually deserve our care and concern.

It’s not a perfect world. There are so many things bad and wrong about it. It can make us go crazy just by thinking of all the crap we have to put up with each day.

Life is not fair – even at Christmas. Who do we think have the best hams and cheeses this season? Certainly not the lowly laborers who’ve been breaking their backs the whole year round to make big profits for their masters.

Life isn’t fair, a fact we just have to live with. But maybe we can try, starting this Christmas, to make life a little less unfair. It is, without doubt, a good thing to try to do the exact opposite of what we ourselves complain about.

What does the Bible say we are to do to those who throw stones at us? “Throw bread back at them.” Not fair, very hard to follow — but worth trying if we are to be truly deserving of our rank as the most supreme of all the creatures on the planet.

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