Lenten Indulgence

Christianity is perhaps the most domineering religion across the globe, it has convinced people of its institution regardless of their culture, including chinese. And last Wednesday these chinese christians were about to see their faith clash with tradition.

Last wednesday was the chinese lunar new year which was also coincidentally Ash wednesday for christians. The chinese new year is always welcomed with a lot of great food on the dinner table, while ash wednesday is contradictingly a day of fasting and self-restraint to simple rations to mark the season of lent. For chinese christians, it was a decision between indulgence or abstinence.

Days prioir to the event, priests and bishops under a chinese-christian order in the country finally agreed to waive the chinese from their obligation to fast so they can celebrate the more significant lunar new year better by feasting, only at the condition of doing acts of charity towards humanity such as giving food to the poor as an alternative for fasting.

What about abstinence and penitence?

By giving an exemption to fast, it connotes that this religious fasting is merely a human decree, that its obligatory act only rests upon the choice of men. And with a circumstance such as the lunar new year enough to warrant a non-observation of fasting, it might be soon enough when somebody can figure out a justification to totally ignore fasting, say when everybody goes through the atkin’s diet therapy.

And in fact there is another reason not to be fasting on ash wednesday: that for being poor shall also have the privilege of an exemption, for it can be read through the lines that they were even to receive great food this ash wednesday by virtue of the charity due for chinese-christians in celebrating the lunar new year.

Dawn of the Chicken

I took the plane to the manila first thing in the first morning of the year of the chicken. I didn’t bring much luggage on this flight, so when I landed in manila, I just took the jeepney (a cheap public transport) to my hotel.

My Hotel was down in chinatown and the lunar new year brought forth dozens of lion dancers with a couple of segmented dragon marionettes to screw up traffic. En route to my hotel, I took the last hundred meters on foot since I felt like watching the lion dance up close. The essence of having lion dances is that when these mascots come prancing into your shop, enterprise or whatever business on new year’s day, it is supposed to rake in good luck and fortune to the place. Heck the only people getting any luckier on that day are those people under the lion suits, since the only way to get these mascots to prance into your place is by hanging a red sachet with cold cash inside for the lions to “eat”. No wonder the streets of chinatown are crawling with cash eating lions, the practice itself has proven to be so lucrative that people from other walks of life are joining the pride, including those who should be fasting in the first place.

We hanged some cash filled red sachet back home in our shop. Our employees told me by phone that it did attract one lion into our shop, but we hanged the envelope way up high in the ceiling on purpose that the duo in the lion suit had to take one guy on his shoulders to grab the sachet. It was well worth their stunt anyway.