File photo: President Christine Kangaloo 

By Prior Beharry

PRESIDENT Christine Kangaloo calls for a renewed commitment to peace and goodwill.

In her 2025 Christmas message, the president highlighted the central role of family in Christmas, noting that Jesus was born “surrounded by His Mother, Mary, and the person who was to play the role of His earthly Father, Joseph.”

She stressed that what bound them was love within the family and used that image to reflect on broader bonds among all people.

Kangaloo said, “As we reflect on the central themes of Christmas, we are invited to pause and remember what truly binds us together as one human family,” Kangaloo said. She urged citizens to embrace the message of peace on earth and goodwill to all “in a world often marked by division, uncertainty, and hardship.”

The president described peace as more than the absence of conflict, defining it as the presence of “justice, mercy, and respect in our daily lives, in our homes, workplaces, and communities.”

She noted that goodwill was something cultivated through ordinary acts, saying, “listening with empathy, speaking with kindness, extending forgiveness, and offering help to those in need.”

Kangaloo said, “The spirit of Christmas urges us to choose compassion over anger, understanding over judgment, and reconciliation over resentment. It challenges us to look beyond our differences and to recognise our shared humanity.”

She said small gestures, multiplied across society, can heal wounds and bridge divides.

Kangaloo encouraged people to renew their commitment to peace—“peace within ourselves, peace with one another, and peace in the wider world”—and to extend goodwill beyond immediate circles to include strangers, the lonely, and the forgotten.