By Elly Twineyo Kamugisha

Why is Christmas a holiday? Or Why was the Queen of England buried in a private ceremony?

Globally, people have just been to Christmas holiday and New Year celebrations.  In this article we are looking at the possible relationship, if any, of history, religion and development of countries.

Since this is the period where Christmas is celebrated, we will start with the importance of Christmas and associated holidays.

Christmas these days is celebrated annually by people in different countries who practice Christianity. These are believers in Jesus Christ as their saviour. Christianity originates from tradition regarding the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of the Galilean Jesus of Nazareth (ca 3 B.C – A.D 29). Mainly Jewish in teachings, Jesus preached of the coming of the kingdom of God – as a ‘kingdom not of this world’ but that of ‘eternal peace and happiness’.

Christmas is, therefore, the day to remember he was born. In most countries this day is the beginning of December holidays that end on January 1 of the new year.

Most people in different countries take these holidays to relax and enjoy leisure. While people in developed world (Europe and North America, others) use this time to enjoy leisure and even travel for tourism, most people in developing African countries take to their villages.

In these villages they attend church, enjoy social interactions, hold family gatherings, and others wed. Churches in villages enjoy the presence of these visitors who increase church collections – and do the work of Jesus and God.

Most importantly, due to work related engagements, most people who have not been visiting their villages regularly get time off their usual engagements to be in the village withier communities.

In Uganda, most people have their villages. Those who were not born in these villages have parents or grandparents who were born there. Uganda is recently getting urbanised. Therefore, people still have their villages.

This may not be the same with developed countries and advanced countries in Europe, North America, and Asia. In these countries big numbers of people no longer have a village where they come from. They come from some town or city – and live in another town or city.

Generally, too, this period benefits the entire economy as that there is a lot of spending. People tend to spend a lot during the preparation for and enjoying this day. A lot of buying goods and services.

This period is good for the countryside economy. It is good for the villages. They get more money from the urbanites. Some people even beg their relatives to contribute to their budget during this period. Some of the workers that have been looking after these people’s farms and homes get paid – and some even get a handshake for the work well-done. They live with the urbanites. They eat and drink with these urbanites.

Most people in rural areas see Christmas as a day that brings home their sons and daughters. They see religion as a uniting force for (and in) their families.

Therefore, Christmas, as part of religious activities and celebrations, is part of the historical culture that Christians celebrate.

Of course, we are advised that January comes after December and school fees are knocking on the doors of most families. We need to plan well. Spend wisely. 

The challenge that we have observed in our country is that there is a lot of excitement during this period which results in accidents and deaths on the roads. One o the reason for accidents is that those who recently bought their automobiles want to drive them to their villages. To show their people that they also have grown financially. A high way requires a masterly of the automobile. Amateur drivers end up messing themselves and others on the highways. A lot of deaths on the highways and other roads recently. Is this development? We can have some evening tea and discuss this. 

Before we come to the relationship of history, culture, and development, let us also look at why the Queen of England, and the head of the Anglican Church, was buried in a private ceremony. Again, there is history; there is religion which is part of culture.

The English refer to the events between 1688 – 1689 as the era, of the Glorious Revolution, when state power began to be shared between the King and Parliament, and there was the Bill of Rights which became the cornerstone of the British constitution. Additional legislation required that the English monarch always be Protestant.

So why was she not buried in the same way we see other Christians being buried? History, and culture have set in. This is why most academic disciplines treat religion as part of culture of a group of people. After the religious (and political) burial services were done, the Queen was laid to rest next to her late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, at the King George VI Memorial Chapel in a private ceremony.

This shows that, considering religion, other aspects of traditions and parts of culture of the people continue to be respected. They are relevant to development of societies or even countries.

Is religion important for development of a country? Without empirical evidence, but with enough emotions, and culture we can say that yes it does. When it teaches people to work hard and love one another, and the people listen and act, then religion is a tool for positive social change. It becomes enabler of economic growth which should ultimately enhance development.

Let’s also talk about religion and miracles in Africa. Why are there a lot of miracles? Is it because Africa is very near Israel the holy place for Christians or Rome the seat of Catholicism? Or Canterbury the home of Anglicans? Is there a price for everything? This seems to be the case in Africa.

In Africa, we have some Pentecostal prophets, prophetesses, pastors and priests, and others that claim that they are Jesus (Jesus the Son of God according to the Bible!) themselves every day performing miracles on the children, the youth, and the old.

They give wealth, children, and promise eternal heaven. They have crowds bigger than any stadium for soccer in UK and Europe generally. They have audiences bigger than any stadium for NBA in the US or Hockey in Canada.

In Africa, and indeed in the other parts of the world, human beings have their issues – depression, rejection, bitter divorce, cheating, diseases, poverty, etc. which make them play for a miracle if not more. The challenge here is that most of them charge for performing miracles on poor souls. In fact, miracles have a price like a price for designer clothes? Yes. You receive bigger miracles when you pay more. What about when you don’t pay at all? Forget miracles. You can’t afford miracles. History and religious books don’t show that Jesus charged for his miracles and preaching services.

We need to be encouraged to work for our families and our societies. To contribute to positive change. To encourage all households to work and earn something – whether using our gardens or farms, firms, or providing a service to others. Every household, and indeed all able-bodied adults, have to work in a market-led system and earn some income. Religion, and their religious leaders, should encourage a crusade of working and having income so that families can sustain themselves.

While there are different writings about religion and development, even about being business-minded, there is no evidence that hard work and success is restricted to a particular religion. What is true is that mostly religion encourages people to work – not to steal. To work and earn and look after their lives and their families. There are several statements and verses in both the Bible and the Koran on the issue of working and looking after families and other people in society.

History? What does history tell us about development of countries? That the more societies started earning more income the more they became developed.

We learn from history that the key components of rapid and sustained economic growth of countries were mainly technology, political leadership, access to markets via good logistics and access to international waters, role of the state in the economic activities under the industrial policy (which mainly refers to import substitution and export promotion) and the trade policy (which mainly concerns tariffs and non-tariff measures to manage both import and export trade). With regard to political leadership, there is a raging debate about what we call institutions: democracy; political and economic institutions. This is our discussion for another day.

There other debates of the contribution of history, location of a country and its climate (summed as geography), and culture. History refers to slave trade and colonisation with regard to Africa.

Geography can be discussed. Can geography mean access to international waters? Adam Smith writing in 1776, in The Wealth of Nations, alluded to the fact of African countries possible high cost of transport for international trade was due to lack of access to the big waters (in other words being landlocked). He wrote that in Africa there was none of those great inlets (such as the Baltic and Adriatic seas in Europe, the Mediterranean and Euxine seas in both Europe and Asia, and the gulfs of Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in Asia) to carry maritime commerce into the interior parts of that great continent; and that even the great rivers of Africa are at too great a distance from one another to give occasion to any considerable inland navigation.

Can we attribute this situation to the countries’ geography, and latitude? Some studies looking at GDP per capita by latitude show that incomes tend to be lower closer to the equator. These studies show that GDP is strongly related to latitude, where incomes are generally lower in the tropical areas near the equator (with Singapore and Hong Kong in East Asia as important exceptions).

In most sub-Saharan Africa, 93 percent of the countries have tropical climate. As you move away from the equator, and from the tropics, to the north or south (these are non-tropical areas), you find that incomes are high than for those in the tropics.

You find that the five North African nations that have a higher GDP per capita and South Africa are outside the tropics. In these tropics, there is prevalence of malaria, agriculture is less productive, and agriculture innovations that are mostly designed for temperate regions make their adoption in tropics somewhat difficult.

It should be noted that historically malarial countries have grown more slowly than others. Annually, Africa loses an estimated 2 million people to malaria – accounting for over 20 per cent of total annual deaths in Africa.

However, geography is not defining factor for a country’s underdevelopment. See good neighbours and leadership as more important for a country’s location.

We shall discuss the contribution of geography, history, and culture another day. Today we wanted to look more at religion, as part of culture, and development.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

The writer is an economist, and Author – Why Africa Fails and other books on the basics of management and economics