{"id":121451,"date":"2021-12-23T16:45:34","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T23:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=121451"},"modified":"2021-12-23T16:45:34","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T23:45:34","slug":"spirits-of-cheer-in-moderation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/12\/23\/spirits-of-cheer-in-moderation\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirits of cheer, in moderation"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Laksiri Warnakula\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The Head of the Catholic Church of Sri Lanka Malcolm Cardinal\nRanjiths\u2019 proposal to keep the shops closed that sell the spirits of cheer\n(supposedly) during Christmas has met with stiff criticism coming from many\nmembers of the public<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well on its own, it is always a sensible thing to do: to keep the\nconsumption of spirits down to a possible minimum, even during festivals such as\nChristmas.&nbsp;&nbsp;After all, we Sri Lankans are said to be amongst the top\nthat drink their guts out, who cannot be easily out drunk by even the world\u2019s\ntop drinkers, say Russians, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now there are some customs and habits, be them cultural,\nreligeous, social or other that can become so ingrained in the collective\nmentality of people, who belong to a particular creed, it is not easy, to ask\nthem to stop it and forget the spirits but still stick to the&nbsp;&nbsp;cheer.\nAnd if the time of the year is also synonymous with a specific custom, where it\nis practised with gay abandon, even if going past the point of moderation\noften, it is still not fair by many, who do enjoy a \u2018drink\u2019 not because they\nare alcoholics,&nbsp;&nbsp;but sticking to a tradition going back for many\nyears.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So let us try our best, drink moderately in celebration of the\n\u2018Birth of Jesus\u2019, while not forgeting the \u2018have nots\u2019, who cannot afford to\nhave a decent meal, let alone a \u2018drink\u2019 that you and I the \u2018haves\u2019 can afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Merry Christmas!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Laksiri Warnakula&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laksiri Warnakula\u00a0 The Head of the Catholic Church of Sri Lanka Malcolm Cardinal Ranjiths\u2019 proposal to keep the shops closed that sell the spirits of cheer (supposedly) during Christmas has met with stiff criticism coming from many members of the public Well on its own, it is always a sensible thing to do: to keep [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laksiri-warnakula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}