Karate and Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be a time for love and generosity; a time for goodwill and empathy. Or is it?

Personally, I am of the opinion that this is no longer the mentality of Christmas and it has been reduced to a romanticism. Christmas has become something one can enjoy only if they can afford it. It has become so commercialised and materialistic that very  little of its true meaning  still remains.

Increasingly, Christmas is being seen as an opportunity to make money. The recent Sainsbury's advert that caused so much controversy is a sad reflection of how far businesses are prepared to go to make a profit. In this case, it was trivialising something profoundly terrible, World War One, to try and sell goods. The fact that they value making money at Christmas more than respecting those who lost their lives or were emotionally and physically scarred by the war just goes to show the extent of it! I won't go in to a huge amount of detail about it, there are plenty of articles online that do that.

Another example of  what I'm talking about is the John Lewis advert that is released every December. Yes, it certainly tugs at one's heartstrings, but allow the façade to fall away and you will find a colder motivation which  is using Christmas as an opportunity to make money.

I sincerely hope Karate does not suffer a fate similar to this. I sincerely hope that commercialisation and political ambitions do not replace its true values. For example, the main concern of a Sensei should be his or her students and the main concern of a head of an organisation should be the members of that organisation, the quality of the karate, etc... Regrettably, this is not always the case, instead, people can be in it for themselves with really tall egos. I consider myself very fortunate to be training under a sensei who is not egotistical or in it for himself and for my organisation to be relatively un-political.

Comparable with Christmas becoming materialistic is how karateka can become overly concerned with belt promotions and winning competitions. I am, by no means against sport karate or the belt system. My point is that these are obvious, black and white benchmarks of success in karate and therefore an oddity. Success is never usually in black and white when it comes to karate. Often, its those achievements that aren't in black and white that can be of the most value to us. The fact karate has given me the self-confidence to do things and take opportunities that I would not have done or taken before, taught me so much about myself and life alongside making me a stronger person means more to me than the fact I passed my 1st dan last year. Passing 1st dan was the most obvious benchmark of success out of the examples I gave and it's also probably the one most  likely to make me look good infront of other people, as would winning competitions, but I don't participate in them. To be concerned with looking good to other people and having a false sense of self-importance is to forget what it really means to be a karateka. It's O.K to be concerned about things like passing gradings; most of us are to some extent but we should not let it be the only thing in our training. Because karate is much more complex than that.

We can never replicate the days of Okinawa in this modern world but that is not to say we shouldn't find a way to modernize karate and still do it justice to prevent it suffering a fate similar to that of Christmas.