As we celebrate the joy of another Christmas season, and look ahead to a New Year fresh of promise and opportunity, we reflect on a year of change few of us could have anticipated. Elections and referenda across the world, conflict, and economic challenges have cast shadows we may not fully understand for years to come.
Events with lasting consequences have not passed Anguilla by either. Investment has generated new economic activity, and helped regenerate what we have had previously. We have seen the birth of a new national bank, proudly serving its customers and looking forward with confidence. Anguillians have continued to show the world what this remarkable island is capable of – in the Olympic Stadium, on cricket fields, in packed music venues in Europe, Africa, America, and on small screens cooking up marvellous creations.
But there has been sadness too. We have said farewell to heroes and heroines who helped to set the direction for this nation. To individuals who through their journalism passionately supported the right of the public to engage in determining the direction of their country. Most significantly, we have seen the passing of Mr James Ronald Webster, the ‘father of the nation’. He demonstrated how, through strength of character, nations can be formed and grow through peaceful, purposeful actions.
Just as these developments may seem to be the passing of an age, so too are they the turning of a page. The celebration next year of the fiftieth anniversary of the Anguilla Revolution gives Anguilla a chance to chart the course for the next chapter of her development. It is a chance too for us to remember that it is each of us, through our actions and inactions, who shape the development of a country. We can choose how to look to the future; we can do so with hope, compassion for others, and optimism.
Yet that hope, compassion and optimism, so central to the Christmas story, can sometimes seem to be in short supply. Events in Aleppo, Berlin, Jordan, and Ankara in recent days underline for us again just how much the world is in need of more tolerance and dialogue; of more friendship and understanding.
And so at this Christmas time, this again is my prayer: that we each learn from the message that Jesus’ birth gives. And as we embark on the year ahead, both in our community and across the world, that His will is done through our actions, so that peace and prosperity prevail. As the seasonal song reminds us:
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
I wish you all a wonderful, relaxing and festive Christmas and a peaceful new year, and may God bless us all, and may God bless Anguilla.
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
