{"id":67555,"date":"2015-12-21T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=67555"},"modified":"2015-12-11T14:59:12","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T14:59:12","slug":"christmas-greetings-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/12\/christmas-greetings-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Greetings 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Again this year, Christians are going to celebrate the birth of the Messiah who came to establish the culture of peace but the culture of destruction has been also growing in power to spread its culture. <\/em><em>I wish a happy Christmas and every imaginable happiness to every reader, although\u00a0 the birth of Jesus will not be\u00a0 easy to celebrate in the true spirit of peace because of\u00a0 the\u00a0 obvious\u00a0 clash\u00a0 of\u00a0 cultures.\u00a0 \u00a0 It is a\u00a0time to expect\u00a0the\u00a0culture\u00a0of understanding\u00a0and harmony to save the citizens of the global village from torture in the name of God\u00a0that\u00a0no one can claim to have seen. Please find below a poem, titled X\u2019mas Spirit, that I wrote not long ago.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u00a0X&#8217;MAS SPIRIT <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I see the spirit resurrecting<br \/>\nin Christmas trees,<br \/>\nmistletoe and Santa Claus.<br \/>\nI see her appearing<br \/>\nwithin the decoration in churches,<br \/>\nhomes and offices<br \/>\nin parties, family reunions<br \/>\nand drinks.<br \/>\nI see her<br \/>\nin the festive rush<br \/>\nthat is tiring<br \/>\nand cards<br \/>\nwhich people have no time to send<br \/>\nbut they do.<br \/>\nI see her<br \/>\nin the sounds of Joy<br \/>\nto the World<br \/>\nand Jingle Bells<br \/>\ncranked out of loudspeakers<br \/>\nin malls and street corners.<br \/>\nBut<br \/>\nshe is missing<br \/>\nfrom the victims of wars<br \/>\nwhich seem to be routine fate<br \/>\nof humankind.<br \/>\nShe is missing from young lives<br \/>\nwho have lost parents<br \/>\nto the famished beasts of fanatics.<br \/>\nShe is missing<br \/>\nfrom the sufferers of physical<br \/>\nand psychological abuse.<br \/>\nShe is missing from lives<br \/>\ndeprived of basic food,<br \/>\nclean water and warm clothing.<br \/>\nShe is missing<br \/>\nfrom homes fallen to warfare<br \/>\nand children<br \/>\nwho are innocent bait<br \/>\nfor Aids and cancer.<br \/>\n________________________________________<\/p>\n<p><em>A multiple award winning writer and poet, Stephen Gill has authored books of fiction, literary criticism and collections of poems. His poetry and prose have appeared in more than five hundred publications, and the focus of his writing is world peace through peaceful means. Occasionally, Stephen Gill writes poetry also in Urdu, Hindi and Panjabi. For contact and other information, please visit his website: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.stephengill.ca\/\" >www.stephengill.ca<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I see the spirit resurrecting<br \/>\nin Christmas trees,<br \/>\nmistletoe and Santa Claus.<br \/>\nI see her appearing<br \/>\nwithin the decoration in churches,<br \/>\nhomes and offices<br \/>\nin parties, family reunions<br \/>\nand drinks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}