The ‘Feast of the Holy Family” celebrates the lives of a special family – comprising the child Jesus, his mother Mary, and his earthly father, Joseph – that is revered by certain Christians. The commemoration falls on the first Sunday after Christmas during the Christmas festival and, initially, was a Roman Catholic observance but was adopted by other Christian denominations.
Speaking on his weekly programme – The Public Interest − former President David Granger expressed the opinion that the family is unsurpassed as a fundamental social institution of universal and personal significance. It can be a place of affection, breeding, care, comfort and sustenance from which the child gains guidance, especially in times of deprivation, disease and poverty. The family is celebrated as an institution to strengthen the bonds of friendship, fellowship and kinship. It is essential for a child’s sense of affinity and identity. It furnishes shared resources – food, safety, shelter and care for the sick, weak, disabled and the next generation.
The former President asserted, however, that the family can be a complicated and conflictual institution. It can also be dangerous. About one in three women can experience physical or sexual abuse at the hands of an intimate partner during their lifetimes. The family, on the other hand, can protect women and girl-children from the adverse socio-economic conditions of poverty and unemployment which threaten stability. The family can flourish when men and women in a relationship regard each other as equals and assume responsibility for their children so as to reduce the incidence of anti-social behaviour.
According to Granger, family life can be more stable when income levels are stable. Poor families need support in times of need and crisis. The family needs a sound financial foundation to furnish comfortable housing, in safe communities with access to education, health care and adequate facilities for entertainment, play and recreation. When two adults are in a stable ‘relationship’, their combined income could help household lives to improve by providing benefits for adults and children.
Family life can support children in times of crisis, reduce stress, improve happiness levels and enhance mental health. Many children who are nurtured in a happy family are likely to perform better in their school examinations, obtain satisfactory employment and earn higher emoluments as adults. Families are different, however. Many are actually headed by a single parent, usually a woman; many adolescents do not live with both their parents during childhood and many children do not complete their childhood living with both parents, due to death, divorce or separation.
The former president asserted that the ‘Feast of the Holy Family’ is more than a commonplace Christian festival. The family is the cradle of life, the citadel of safety and the classroom of the culture of loving, sharing and forgiving. It is a stimulus of social mobility. If, for religious reasons, the ‘holy family’ is an unacceptable model to some persons, the aim nevertheless should be the ‘happy family’, regardless of its shape or form.
