Goodbye to buy-buy

No wonder many see their lives flash before them as they sink beneath the floodwaters of this increasingly secular celebration of commercialism, come to be known as Christmas. The whirlpool sucks in Christian and non-Christian alike. Just how easy is it to swim against the tide of tradition?

Last year, Rod Shearer's Christmas meal consisted of baked beans on toast, and he spent Christmas Day sanding and varnishing the kitchen floor of his Edinburgh home. ''I remember we got a special deal on the hire equipment,'' he laughs. He and his wife Gail are Jehovah's Witnesses, and therefore don't celebrate Christmas.

''If you look back to before the fourth century, Christmas was never celebrated,'' he says. ''It was only adopted because of pagan rituals around that time of year. It's widely accepted by Bible scholars that Jesus wasn't born around December 25. When you think about it logically, there would be no shepherds staying out overnight in the fields with their lambs at that time of year. Quite clearly this is not a genuine Christian celebration.''

''We're trying to be pure about our beliefs,'' adds Gail. For her, Christmas simply stopped when she was 11. ''At the time it was fairly devastating. But my mother, who had become a Jehovah's Witness, explained the reasons to me.'' Rod became a Jehovah's Witness in his twenties. ''As I learned about the Bible, I realised there was no scriptural basis for celebrating Christmas. At that stage I had no children, no romantic attachment to Christmas. I saw it for what it was: commercial.''

Apart from cheap-rate hire equipment, not celebrating Christmas has a number of advantages. ''It's hard not to feel a wee bit smug, because you're glad not to have anything to do with it honestly,'' says Gail. ''I saw two ladies literally fighting over the last chicken. They kept grabbing it out of each other's trolley. Apart from the fact that some people have an underlying dread of that time of year, some of my friends tell me they're really glad when it's all over!''

Their children, Sadie, seven, and Jack, four, have never celebrated Christmas. ''In shops, sweet old ladies will stop the children and say 'And what will Santa be bringing you this Christmas?' Poor Sadie would get all embarrassed and confused, so I would step in and politely say: 'We don't celebrate Christmas.' The poor women just want to die from embarrassment. That can be a difficult situation.''

Doesn't the endless TV advertising make them want toys at Christmas, like everyone else? ''Yes, we get asked: 'Can we have one of those?''' says Gail. ''But our children are in no way deprived of toys,'' says Rod. ''They just don't have that celebration used as an excuse for them.'' Gail adds: ''We give our children presents for achieving goals or for getting a good school report, but they're spontaneous actions.

''Most children know perfectly well there's a time coming when requests can be fulfilled,'' continues Gail. ''Therefore they request items.'' This painful logic results in the constant nagging which soon squeezes all the joy out of giving. ''We see small people being turned into little consumers,'' says Gail.

Indeed, it's the perceived need to keep feeding the expectations of children that has kept many families on the festive treadmill for so long. Glaswegian Gurdev Singh Pall's parents always celebrated Christmas by exchanging gifts, eating turkey, and putting up decorations. Gurdev puts it down to neighbourliness, in the same way that in India Sikhs would celebrate Hindi and Islamic festivals with their neighbours.

''But looking back I found that we were putting far more effort in getting the tree and the decorations than for our own Sikh celebrations. About 10 years ago my wife and I became more aware of our religion, and we made a point of teaching the children and getting books and informing them.''

Then, six years ago, he came to the decision to stop celebrating Christmas. Was it hard? ''Not for me. For the family, yes. They just weren't happy with the idea. I said we'll slowly change. First and foremost, don't put up the decorations, because it's a form of idol worship. So the first year we had no tree, but continued with the gifts. Then in the second year we just changed over by using our own Sikh festival day to give gifts. For example the birthday of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, who was instrumental in bringing about the Sikh faith, sometimes coincides with Christmas Day.''

Gurdev acknowledges that stopping Christmas celebrations was easier for him because, with two sons and a daughter, his was a comparatively small Sikh family, so there were fewer protests. ''My youngest was 11 when we stopped. It wasn't hard to make him understand why we were stopping.

''Christmas Day for the Christian community is a day of worship, and for the family to get together. But where does everything else come into it? The wreath, the tree, the presents? What has a Christmas tree got to do with Christ? What has Santa Claus got to do with Christ? People keep putting themselves under pressure - it's horrendous.''

Yet members of Gurdev's extended family of 46 seem only too willing to put themselves under increasing pressure both financial and temporal to celebrate a secular version of the Christian festival. One member of the family was extremely resentful. ''I don't think there are even Christians who celebrate Christmas as much as he does. There's one or two other families who spray 'Merry Christmas' on their doors with snow spray - it makes me wonder. Yet when it comes to their own festivals they haven't a clue.''

Gurdev's own family will rise on the morning of December 25 as usual, say their prayers, get ready for the day, have a nice meal, and then, later in the day, phone all the family and, perhaps paradoxically, wish them all a Merry Christmas! ''Would you believe it!'' he exclaims.

He says most Sikhs should understand his reasons for stopping but can't find the strength to stop themselves. ''I don't want to paint a picture that things are changing. They're not. It's very slow.''

''A lot of people aren't particularly happy about the way this tradition has turned out,'' says Rod. ''They feel trapped and don't know how to stop. I really feel for people like that because they may have no religious convictions themselves.''

It may take a practice run, but perhaps the best way for Christians and non-Christians alike to celebrate the millennial Christmas is to lose the traditional trappings and get back to basics.

Maybe that way people can at last enjoy what we all wish for each other at this time of year, but few of us achieve - the peace of a truly tranquil Christmas.