The Yuletide celebrations have just ended, with the usual aftermaths, trailing them. Whether one is a Christian or nonchristian, Christmas is a period of frenetic activity and high expectations, great hopes and disappointments, increase in all manner of vices and road accidents.

AFTER all, a day, including each of the “three special days,” is 24 hours, made up of morning, afternoon and night. As the ancient Greek philosopher, Protagoras of Abdera, aptly remarked, “man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.”

A LARGE percentage of the new churches are disguised business ventures. But because of material poverty, intellectual cowardice and inability to genuinely appreciate the existential implications of the cosmic insignificance of human life here on earth, most Christians believe that by giving to the pastor, by giving to the church, they are really acting in accordance with the divine will, forgetting that no one knows the divine will for sure.

In this essay, I argue that Christmas has become a useless social fad which should be allowed to die out because it has progressively degenerated into a period for indulging and celebrating the grossest attributes of the human species – greed, avarice, licentious living, debauchery and spiritual self-abnegation.

ASUU should focus more on emolument at the entry point into the profession, rather than concentrating too much attention on professorial salaries. In as much as there are good reasons for drawing attention to the inadequate wages of the highest academic rank in the system, I believe it is even more crucial to call attention to the paltry salaries paid to graduate assistants and assistant lecturers at the starting point of the academic career.