Well?

Whereas Christmas is a Christian festival, most people take it as a convenient indication that a new year with all its possibilities is just around the corner. That, perhaps sadly, is the way of a mostly comfortable world of practicalities and matter-of-fact custom.

The observance of Christmas remains significant to millions of people professing Christian faith, and has an influence for good. It also sadly has a negligible effect in impoverished areas the world over where living is wretched and conditions intolerable.

Will there ever dawn the day when a united world takes unprecedented action and banishes poverty and its accompanying despair wherever it is found? The cynic will immediately declare such a condition impractical and beyond credibility. Is it?

The springboard for such a miracle would be goodwill. Are we so mentally and physically impoverished as to shrug our shoulders (yet again) and say, 'What's the use?' All things considered in a so-called 'united world', this state of affairs shames us all. Please do something practical, however modest, for the sake of millions with virtually nothing to sustain life.

We could list charities, but should this be necessary if you are keen enough to act now? All that is necessary is close at hand and it only requires you to act before you go to make a drink or something as matter-of-fact. Otherwise our comfortable -- if hectic -- lives will find a neat excuse for forgetfulness.

From: Henry Luo, Shanghai I must voice an echo evoked by Mr Ramsey's New Year message in my mind. The stark and striking gap between the poor and the rich goes on to enlarge in my country and, much more than this, a call to talk about it among the comfortably well-off Western classic music lovers more often than not fails to produce the comer. People just go on sending inane holiday greetings as if anything wrong can be kept at bay. The point is that more than the bleak situation of the have-nots is the pervasive nonchalance obtaining with the haves, including the cultured haves.