Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.
— Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990.
Christmas is back, with sales everywhere not to mention giant Christmas trees a common sight and Christmas songs filling the air.
Pump attendants in petrol stations and sales assistants in shopping complexes, restaurant hands and kitchen helpers, cashiers and doormen are all wearing snow caps.
Despite the pandemic, this year’s celebration goes on but with full compliance with the standard operating procedures set by the authorities, making it an unprecedented do.
Here in our beloved Land of the Hornbills, Christmas, like Hari Raya, Gawai Dayak, Chinese New Year and Deepavali, is for everyone.
Christians and non Christians are all part of the celebration because you will be drawn to it by your Christian friends, relatives and associates.
This is because the ngabang (celebratory visit) phenomenon applies to all religious or cultural celebrations for us here in Sarawak — long before former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s One Malaysia concept.
For us here, Christmas is very special because your Christian host can be a Dayak, a Chinese, a Melanau or even an Indian.
It’s like saying there will be more hosts than there will be guests, which is why the run-up to Dec 25 is so much more fervent in the cities and towns.
In my Saratok longhouse, Christmas arrives on the night of Dec 24. Longhouse folk will be gathered at the ruai (open gallery) after a midnight mass at the longhouse chapel St Gabriel. Previously, this was followed by merrymaking longhouse style.
For us Dayaks, we observe Christmas on a mediocre scale but hold our Gawai Dayak do with grandeur and total merriment, especially if it is done in the longhouse.
In the old days, all you needed to do was hit the gong and whoever heard it must come because when the gong beckoned, it meant that the least the hearer do was to touch the Gawai offerings.
Those who could not make it to the open house would have to do some simple ritual to free them of the ill-fortune of not responding to the call of the gong.
In modern-day Sarawak, the open house is an act of thanksgiving and sharing.
Here, I reiterate, we exemplify the act of total unity that has made our state a model in the country in terms of harmony despite our diversity.
This also has been repeatedly emphasised by our leaders starting from the days of the first Sarawak Cabinet in 1963, continued by my namesake when he was chief minister — he lost a pair of leather shoes at our Kedap longhouse’s Gawai Antu in 1973 and I lent him my slippers, but without telling him we shared ‘Tawi’ — and all our revered subsequent CMs.
Christmas always reminds me of my first Christmas eve in Penang (1975) hosted by a lecturer friend, Prof Dr Clifford Sather, whom I knew through Benedict Sandin, who was then Senior Fellow in Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Centre of Policy Research. I was the only Iban First Year undergraduate then.
Apart from Sandin, also present was Prof Derrick Freeman, who was on a visit from Australia National University (then, he was the mentor of James Jemut Masing, now Tan Sri Datuk Amar who needs no introduction in Sarawak politics).
What stood out from all acts was our (Freeman and I) intake of durian, turkey with rice, beer and brandy in that order. Freeman spoke Iban in challenging me to take beer and brandy after the durian. Both of us survived the possibly fatal combination.
Sather only lectured us in our Second Year for an anthropology course. We reunited during a Gawai Antu at Ulu Bayor longhouse in 1988. We met again in 2002 when he was the chair of Asian Studies in Unimas, Kota Samarahan.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic this time around, my movement is limited to Metrocity here in Matang but I may join family members for a Christmas tiffin in Kota Samarahan.
Forget about any Christmas Eve dinner with them as on Dec 24, we are still at work.
So this year, all celebrations, if any at all, are done under restrictions.
There may be also a lesser degree of Christmas ‘ngabang’ this year due to the limitations imposed subsequent to the global pandemic declaration early this year.
Nevertheless, friendships and understanding are being fostered all year round, year after year, across all ethnic, racial and religious spectrums.
I hope next year there will be much more merriment during Christmas. Merry Christmas to all!
