We Albertans love the Christmas season.

Caroling, tobogganing, office parties, candlelight services, skating, skiing, sneaking out after dark to rearrange a neighbour’s Christmas lawn ornaments.

The latter has become one of our more recent holiday traditions here in Wild Rose Country. An enjoyable one too, I might add.

Last winter’s sighting of my neighbor, Hong Lee, rushing out in the wee hours clad only in boxers and a flimsy housecoat, desperate to get his brightly-lit buck down off the doe had me chuckling well into the summer. "Yu ah weal joksta foh ministaw," Hong periodically says.

"Well," I humbly respond, "we all have our spiritual gifts."

In keeping with recent decisions rendered by the wise guys in Ottawa, this year I’m thinking of introducing a truly Canadian bent to Christmas tradition by investing in a stag for Hong’s Rudolph to clamber on.

And speaking of wise-guy politicians, I’ve gained a better understanding this fall as to why so many Canadians refer to Albertans as "rednecks."

How else do you explain the numbskull notion our provincial government skated out earlier this fall suggesting the homeless be required to pay for overnight accommodation in shelters?

It’s all about teaching down-and-out Albertans to be fiscally responsible, said the spokesman for a government that periodically reveals a collective IQ measuring somewhere in the vicinity of the cost of a litre of gasoline in this province.

We’re making no assumptions as to whether or not a similar proposal was trotted out over at Enmax, Calgary’s city-owned power company that recently boasted third-quarter profits of $50.4 million. It’s doubtful, however, that we can expect an announcement soon that, in the name of fiscal accountability, Enmax is aborting its plans to seek an 11 per cent rate increase for 2004.

And in a bold move to outsmart its provincial counterpart in the "Government Knows Best" sweepstakes, city council recently amended Calgary’s panhandling bylaws.

What the defenders of our civic freedoms here in the Stampede city claim they want to curtail is the scenario where mentally ill Melvin-fresh from two hours of sleep on a frigid park bench-approaches upwardly mobile Michael for spare change as the latter, steaming latte in hand, makes his way from the transit station to a glassy office tower. (No mention yet from our city father/mothers of plans to prohibit every charity under the Big Dipper from freely canvassing suburbia.)

Frankly, as one who frequently traverses Calgary’s downtown core, I’m far more worried about being approached by some upwardly mobile young business exec racing his mammoth SUV or sporty Boxster down 6th Avenue after consuming several beers after work than I am by the pathetic approaches of Melvin and his cronies.

As further evidence of the Grinch-like philosophies sweeping this region, I’m told new cafeteria workers at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology are being asked to take a 35 per cent pay cut from $9.40 per hour to $5.91. It means they’d earn one cent more per hour than the minimum wage here in Ralph’s World.

I once earned $4.50 an hour for menial labor in Alberta. That was in 1974.

So thanks to the Grinches among us, it’s the homeless, mentally-ill, beggars and new immigrants who are too frequently taking the hits as this incredibly wealthy province remains obsessed with eliminating debt.

To which I say: shame on a government perpetuating a culture that panders to the whims of those at the top of corporate pyramid schemes! And shame on every Albertan, especially Christians, for allowing such a culture to thrive uncontested!

We learn many valuable truths from the Christ of Christmas. But at the core of the Bethlehem narrative is the shocking marvel of a highly privileged One who willingly surrendered more than anybody in this country will ever attain, to identify with the homeless, the outcasts and the nobodies.

I trust this Christmas will be a distinctive one for you and yours. Whatever else you do, invest in an honest effort this time ‘round to identify with the truly needy and get a taste of their world.

It’s not a question of what would Jesus do; that’s precisely what He did, beginning the night He arrived in Bethlehem.