CHRISTMAS 2001 ISSUE

For many, Christmas means giving and receiving gifts, a time of family celebration and reunions. It may even bring to mind the characters from Dicken's memorable Christmas Carol. Tiny Tim. Or Scrooge shouting out to a boy on the street 'What day is it' and the boy's gleeful answer, "why, it's Christmas day…"

But the real story of Christmas, the celebration of Christianity's most holy event and the commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ, is told in the Chapters of Luke and Matthew in the New Testament of the Holy Bible.

It is a time rich in symbolism, when Christians the world-over celebrate the dawn of God's light shining upon humans lost in a valley of darkness. It is from this that the artist has created his images, rendering them into a Fiji context, but faithfully following the story of the birth of Jesus, a story that has remained unchanged for centuries.

In the first of the Fiji Philatelic Bureau's six Christmas commemorative stamps, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, a virgin espoused to Joseph, and the angel tells Mary that she shall bring forth a son who will be named Jesus. He, exclaims the angel, will be known as the Son of the Highest: and of His kingdom, there shall be no end. As foretold by the angel, Mary gave birth to her first-born son, and He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

It is a Fiji manger, surrounded by breadfruit and the lush Fiji jungle, localized and traditionalized to be more meaningful to Fiji's population. The child lies on a 'kula' fringed mat, much as a newborn baby in the islands would do today. We are told that shepherds in the area guarded their flocks at night, and the artist depicts the arrival of the shepherds at the manger to see the newborn babe, after being told "Fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy. For unto you is born a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord…"

The Fourth Stamp depicts the three wise men from the east, bearing their gifts of gold (a Golden Cowrie shell, Cypraea aurantium, rare but collected in Fiji); frankinsense and myrrh, both aromatic gifts which would have been acceptable for a high king in ancient Fijian tradition. The wise men carry chiefly staffs and a rolled bundle of masi, the cloth made from beaten mulberry bark, still a common gift in this day and age.

The Fifth Stamp illustrates Joseph, warned in a dream to flee before an embittered Herod destroys the child, and the Holy Family preparing to set sail on a voyaging canoe, a double-hulled drua.

The final stamp portrays what a Fiji Christ child might look like, his world filled with birds and butterflies, the trees above thick with mangoes, as, according to Biblical text, "the child grew…strong in spirit and filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him."

Each Fijian village has at least one Christian church, and in December, particularly, the story of the birth of Christ unfolds in Fijian sermons and carols. That the artist chose to make the scenery local rather than attempt to depict Nazareth and Bethlehem is not an injustice to the Bible, but rather an adaptation to the Fiji way of understanding the principles behind the celebration.

"The narratives concerning Christ's infancy," notes one study of the Bible, "as we find them in Matthew and Luke, pose difficult problems for those who would use them to reconstruct actual history… they communicate the mystery of redemption and do not portray a diary of daily events."

What is historical is the decree ordering a census of the entire world's population, and the trip made by Joseph and his virgin wife Mary, from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to David's town of Bethlehem - because he was of the house and lineage of David.

In the King James' version of the New Testament, a verse proclaims that "Suddenly, there was a multitude of the heavenly host singing, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men"

That is Fiji's wish, not just for itself, but for the World.