I am writing this on Christmas Eve for you, dear readers, who will hopefully be reading it smack in the middle of that strangely unreal hiatus of a week between Christmas and New Year. During this so-called festive season I find that the older I get, the more reflective I become. Nothing strange or new, I can hear you saying. Kenneth is finally maturing.

My first thoughts are always about all the people, relatives and friends, whom I have loved and lost over the half century of my conscious existence. There are so many. I am always deeply moved by the In Memoriam page in this paper and can well understand why, for many in my age bracket and over, it is the first page they read. As my sandglass runs out, I am more aware that we are all like skittles in the line of fire.

I always live in hope that the delight of commemorating the birth of the Christ Child among us will somehow mitigate the terrible and incurable sorrows caused by our own mortality. This is why I think that Christmastime is so stressful: almost as bad as an election. As we struggle to strike a balance between kitschy prodigality and sensible frugality, between unbridled overindulgence and controlled generosity, between superficial self-seeking acquaintance and deep and meaningful relationships, at this time of the year, we are faced with a concatenation of bewildering choices. This is why Christmas causes as much sadness as it causes joy. This is why we all yearn to be children once again; free from the complications that come with adulthood. What a wonderful privilege it is to observe children's reactions during this time.

The birth of Jesus of Nazareth 2009 years ago may, ironically, have gone unremarked in the Roman annals yet for well over 1,000 years the birth of the Christ, the One whom Christians believe is the Son of the Living God, has been celebrated in varying styles throughout the world because it is a feast that radiates happiness in the bleak midwinter of our fragile mortality.

So it is. My many friends in Rajasthan e-mail or SMS Christmas greetings despite the fact that they are Hindu; they have no hang-ups about Christmas like us stooges in the so-called civilised world who, for the sake of political correctness, have dropped the Christmas from the Happy and replaced it with the ridiculous and innocuous Holidays! It is totally insane.

The year 2009 will be remembered as a watershed after the Finnish atheist woman won the case in the European Court of Human Rights for the removal of crucifixes from classrooms in Italian state schools. As we erode our Christianity from within, many do not realise that there is another creed far more militant to take its place, which leaves this melting pot we call Europe in an ever more volatile state. This is why many people are on the defensive and take such extreme stands on this issue and others like it to the extent that the very values that our forefathers died for, liberty, equality and fraternity, will, sure as eggs are eggs, disappear in a maelstrom of right-wing ideology, which will undoubtedly work against us all just as Fascism and Nazism did in the last century.

This mood of what I call optimistic pessimism is accentuated by the fact that, every week, I am subjected to the discipline of thinking about how to present a cogitative argument to you in about 800 words. (I hear the editor choke on this one). It is because despite the fact that, like you, I believe the world is a crazy place I still feel we could do something about it. Some people enjoy reading what columnists have to say and others do not. Some think that we are dogmatic and arrogant, which I do sincerely hope I am not. Of course, I have my opinions. Who doesn't? However, I merely present them but do not ask you to necessarily share them.

There is no greater compliment paid to me than when someone I barely know from a bar of soap stops me in the street to tell me that they so enjoy reading me despite the fact that they do not agree with me. Wouldn't it be an utter bore if they did? This is what our civilisation is all about: agreeing to disagree and being free to do so. This is what we must all strive to preserve at this juncture of our history. Freedom of expression and even freedom of thought are under threat. There may be some who might object to my free-thinking, yet, in their iconoclastic bigotry hides a brand of intolerance more pernicious than Torquemada's.

This is why we should all take a New Year's resolution to count 30 not 10 before blurting out something that we might deeply regret later on. This is why we must try not only to be more tolerant but to be more understanding. That is far more important. Yet, at the same time, we must not be afraid of expressing our opinion as long as it is one that has been formed by a sound intellectual background and a firm knowledge of the facts in hand; shooting from the hip rarely works and that goes for me too.

While hoping you have all had a wonderful Christmas I wish you all a splendiferously prosperous and rewarding New Year; wishful thinking you might say in our barely post-credit crunch atmosphere but then prosperity is not all about money, is it?

kzt@onvol.net