Stop these unwise celebrations

As if people have nothing better to celebrate, some parents today hold graduation ceremonies for promotion of their children from a Baby Class of Nursery School to a Middle one of the same school. Some celebrate promotion of their children from Middle Class of the same Nursery School to Top Class. They make for their children graduation gowns and caps or buy them. They also buy several crates of drinks, hire for the occasion video coverage, a Master of Ceremony, decorators, tents and a public address system accompanied by a DJ. They cook food or make a barbeque for not less than 50 people, invite neighbours, friends, the children’s teachers and sometimes a religious leader to officially open the ceremony with a prayer! Is this not crazy? Much as it is good for a parent to be happy when his or her child moves from one level of education to another, it is not wise to hold a celebration of that magnitude for promotions of children in nursery schools. It is not worth spending much money and wasting the invitees’ precious time to come and hear speeches from the Master of Ceremony, children, the child’s parents and invitees about the ‘wonderful’ promotions the child has received to move from Baby Class to Middle Class or from Middle Class to Top Class of a Nursery School. Much as children in nursery schools are valuable and important like other children in other levels of education, they are still too low and quite a long way to go to warrant a celebration of that magnitude. Parents who are anxious of celebrating successes of their children should advisably wait doing so until their children become best national candidates in primary and secondary school leaving examinations, and more so after graduating from University. Even when that happens, they should be low key celebrations attended by a few people consisting of family members, neighbours and friends. Ideally money which would otherwise be used in celebrating ‘graduation’ of children at lower levels of education should alternatively be saved into fixed deposit accounts and used to pay childrens’ fees at higher levels of education. Unwise celebrations are also found in some Christian parents who expensively and luxuriously celebrate their children’s birthdays or baptisms or pre Holy Communion confirmations. They do so similar to Nursery School ones, mentioned above. The only exception is that instead of buying graduation gowns and caps for their children, they buy them new clothes such as suits in the case of boys and dresses in the case of girls. Other people too celebrate completion of various courses in tertiary institutions such as vocational training and University. The usually celebrated courses at vocational training institutions, immediately after successful completion of the same, include tailoring, masonry, carpentry, brick making, painting, interior designing, keyboard playing , guitar playing, embroidery, hair beauty making, electronics, electrical installation, motor vehicle mechanics, computer literacy, computer maintenance and repairs and the like. Such people also celebrate expensively even with bigger groups of invitees, more drinks and eats than those done for nursery school ‘graduated’ children. Likewise, University graduates tend to celebrate bigger than the above, usually, according to the level of the degrees. When one is a Master’s degree graduate he/she tends to spend more on his/her celebration than a Bachelor’s degree graduate purportedly depicting seniority. So is the Ph.D. graduate. To say the least, it sounds like sheer madness to know that some celebrating University graduates even hire halls, a convoy of motor vehicles, tents, decorations and dancers. They also buy many more drinks and spend much more money cooking first class foods for a sheer thing of celebrating completion of degree courses in addition to what they spent studying. The absurdity of it is that the concerned go round in homes and workplaces, a few weeks or months to the occasion, raising money from relatives, neighbours and friends to have enough for the level, style and kind of budget they want their occasions to have. Such a thing is tantamount to extortion since it forces people to contribute to a budget they did not initiate for another person’s pleasure and prestige. One wonders whether anyone would be refused being awarded his/her degree or academic transcript if before receiving it he/she did not prove to the University authorities that he/she will celebrate his/her graduation expensively. For a sheer company, is it not enough for a person who is to be awarded the degree to bring with him or her, his/her parents or caregivers or spouse, and quietly walk to the front of the University Hall with a smile, after his/her name is called out aloud, and receive his degree and or academic transcript? It is high time the practice of contributing money for graduation ceremonies is replaced with paying money to the graduate’s bank account to enable him/her use his/her qualification to employ himself/herself or enable him/her to establish himself/herself. It is not wise to spend a lot of money celebrating in one day, eating and drinking, going to the beach for photographs, laughing and merry making, then go to the toilet and leave there all that has been drunk and eaten lavishly when the new graduate will obviously be needy the following day. Some of them even do fail to afford transporting themselves to places to look for what to do after such wonderful ‘celebrations’. Some lack food thereafter and even money for affording a cup of tea. Which wisdom is that? Society ought to change its mindset over the issue and do the right thing. Commonest of unwise celebrations are weddings. They are conducted in a similar manner to University graduates’ celebrations. Much money is spent on one day, in a show off like manner, leaving the couple without any to fend for themselves thereafter. Fundraising for the occasions is also done through relatives and friends by extortion in a somewhat coercive manner. Instead of an expensive wedding why can’t the couple have a modest one by keeping the day’s expenses low with only relatives, close neighbours and friends attending it? Since they are the very people who make contributions to the wedding and therefore in a position to know well the immediate needs of the couple, why can’t contributions to them be in kind in the form of a plot or house bought for them or refrigerator or gas cooker or wardrobe or sofa set or television or DVD player or video camera or digital camera or laptop or desktop computer or washing machine or bag of rice or sugar or motor vehicle or paid fees for further education or subsistence money deposited on the couples’ bank accounts? Contributing individuals should do away with jealousy which makes them uncomfortable to contribute such things. They should also do away with greed which makes them prefer contributing where they are sure of eating and drinking lavishly. The fact that in almost every celebration, celebrants fundraise from relatives, neighbours and friends, one wonders why they should not restrict invitations for the occasions to that same circle of people to minimise expenses? For once that is so it becomes possible for a person to use his/her own means to host the occasions without fundraising from others to disturb and or disorganise their personal budgets. After all, such relatives, neighbours and friends will be satisfied with what is offered them since they know they were not asked to contribute any money towards the occasion and that the host celebrant, they know very well, cannot offer them what he/she does not have. Another habit to overcome is show off and pride. It is one of the factors responsible for and or one of the causes of graduation ceremonies for nursery school children and lavish ones for fresh graduates from University. Society should alternatively switch to fundraising for children of poor parents and orphans, to pursue their education to University. It should also instead fundraise for poor adults in our midst to enable them further and advance their education. Doing so will be a wise investment to the country with the potential of empowering people to fight and reduce poverty. It will also go a long way to reduce the rate of crime and the devastation by other social ills. dalemuta@yahoo.co.uk