Letters to the Editor
View(s):This pavement is not meant for walking
We thank the Sunday Times for featuring the uncompleted pavements within the Colombo City and their inconveniences and dangers to pedestrians. The uncompleted pavement along Braybrooke Place, Colombo 2 is a case in point. There are several flat dwellers like me in this vicinity who walk to the supermarket at Hyde Park Corner almost daily.
We are compelled to use the narrow incomplete pavement along this street as one side has parking bays. The narrow road is dangerous for any pedestrian to use. Several of us have twisted our ankles on this stretch. Children have to be carried due to the state of the pavements to ensure their safety.
Only one part close to Arpico has been done and it is almost a year since this work commenced.
We all pay the Colombo Municipality very high annual rates and the service we get is very poor.
Fernando
Colombo 2
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, what’s the point of being the tallest?
On August 18, Minister Arjuna Ranatunge conducted what was described as an ‘opening ceremony’ to have the world’s tallest Christmas tree on Galle Face Green. It was also reported that this tree which symbolizes ‘peace and harmony’ will be unveiled on December 24.
Let us leave aside the structural details and logistics of this unveiling. Let us also leave aside the benefit to the poor and needy of this country by having the word’s tallest ‘Christmas tree’.
The so called ‘Christmas tree’ whether in Sri Lanka or in any part of the world has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. Christmas, is the Feast of the Nativity – a day Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. He was born in a cattle shed and laid in a manger. It is the manger which is the centre-piece of Christmas and it is replicas of a manger which is found or should be found, in churches during the Christmas season. Nowhere, in the Bible is there any mention of a Christmas tree.
The Christmas tree which has over the decades been commercialised originated in Germany perhaps in the 15th or l6th century when the people who happened to be Christian, brought into their homes green trees which they brightened up and decorated during the the wintry Christmas season. Hence it came to be called a ‘Christmas tree’.
Last year Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith requested the priests of the Roman Catholic Church not to decorate the church with so called ‘Christmas trees’. He said that these trees have no religious significance and are a symbol of social gatherings and commercialisation. We can see this reality in almost every capital of the world even in Sri Lanka.
May the tree proposed to be erected on Galle Face Green be called the ‘Peace and Harmony Tree’.
V.P. Perera
Colombo 5