When the New Year comes, we think about getting all the necessary accessories for the holidays; in other words, the stuff that we can use to decorate the table and amaze our family, friends and other acquaintances that go from house to house.
During my whole life, starting from 1965 when I was born, I have always witnessed how people have rushed to do New Years’ shopping in vain, which has preceded the New Year and has ended in vain-guests leave early, the stuff used to decorate the tables lessen, and as we watch the boring New Years’ shows on January 13 while eating walnuts and chewing dried fruit, we say good-bye to the beginning of the New Year.
I don’t remember a time during my whole life when we can sit and talk about what was good and what was bad during the past year. Well, until 1988, there was no discussion at all. Dear Leonid Ilyeyich, then Yuri Nikolayevich, after a while Constantine Ustinovich and finally Mikhail Sergeyevich all appeared on our television screens and said that everything was fine in the country, which our Homeland was a part of. Of course, nobody believed in their words because not one person dared to talk about the good and the bad. There was no discussion because the thing that we considered bad was said to be one of the achievements of the year; as for what we thought was good, the leaders of the hegemonic political parties didn’t talk about so that they wouldn’t ruin New Year for us with the negative criticisms of the social defects. After all, New Years was not a time to criticize, but rather, a time to congratulate our “achievements.”
Now I remember a story that we read in the second or third grade in Armenian class. It was about a boy living in one of the capitalist cities of Europe who was sad as he looked at the people buying Christmas trees. There were barely any Christmas trees left. New Years’ Eve was approaching and he was going to be left without a Christmas tree. I don’t think it would be a shame now, at my age, to say that as I read that story in Armenian class, I was crying inside and hating that capitalism which Rome’s beloved Pope John Paul II would call “Inhuman capitalism” later.
Later on, when we were studying a new lesson in history, when we had reached the French Revolution and I read the slogan “freedom, equality and brotherhood”, I was filled with joy without even looking at the blood dripping from the barricades and at the same time, I felt bad for Hugo’s protagonist who didn’t lie to the soldiers, said good-bye to his mother and went back to get killed.
It would be much later when I would learn about all the evil that happened in the world with this slogan and I would think to myself that not every word said may make life more joyous. I would find out later that there was someone (God’s son) whose birth preceded the so-called New Year celebration. As a matter of fact, when I was a child, his birth was called “Jrorhnek” (Day of Blessing in Armenian) and a day for eating rice; we didn’t really understand what that meant.
So, after eating rice and raisins for years on that day I was to know that there was one man (God’s son Jesus Christ) who had come to say “Love each other” and then find out that that is the same as “freedom, equality and brotherhood”. Man must first be free in order to love; man must feel equal to someone else in order to love; man must see a brother in someone else in order to love.
The words of that man (God’s son) were not an order, but rather something for the people who listen. But since different people have different types of hearing and depth of ears differs from one another, each person tends to understand the commandment of loving each other in a different way. They understand “each other” as the people that come to their homes and the people they go to see not just to celebrate the holiday, but rather to show off their ability to buy or do something which goes against the slogan “freedom, equality and brotherhood”.
When Christ said “Love each other”, he probably meant that man must be free to do whatever he wants and be free from the obsession that he has of being satisfied for what he has. If man were to be free of the obsession that he has over being satisfied with what he has, then he would probably be considered equal to everyone else. If he was considered equal, then there would most definitely be brotherhood.
Well, after all this philosophy, there is not much space in the article to talk about the good and the bad. It’s good, indeed, that the 50,000 dollar Christmas tree put in the middle of our Republic Square is the most expensive out of all the CIS countries, but it is bad that there are children that are going to go to sleep on New Years’ eve without waiting for Santa Claus. Of course, it is good that the municipality has spent a million dollars for constructing an ice skating rink at Swan Lake, but what’s bad is the children watching others skate on the rink are the ones who beg for money, however, they have not chosen to take that path themselves.
It’s good that a 115 year old political party talks a lot about its “glorious” past, but what’s bad is that the group of “nationalists” has never thought about the fact that in order to have an army of soldiers, that are strong like lions, you must first feed and take care of the young lions. I think that the slogan “freedom, equality and brotherhood” was being talked about by the members of that party.