Each December, a lot of the Christian world enters a well-known cycle of celebration: carols, lights, adorned timber, client frenzy and the nice and cozy imagery of a snowy night time. In america and Europe, public discourse usually speaks of “Western Christian values”, and even the imprecise notion of “Judeo-Christian civilisation”. These phrases have turn into so frequent that many assume, virtually routinely, that Christianity is inherently a Western faith — an expression of European tradition, historical past and identification.
It isn’t.
Christianity is, and has all the time been, a West Asian / Center Jap faith. Its geography, tradition, worldview and founding tales are rooted on this land — amongst peoples, languages and social buildings that look much more like these in at the moment’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan than something imagined in Europe. Even Judaism, invoked within the time period “Judeo-Christian values”, is itself a completely Center Jap phenomenon. The West acquired Christianity — it actually didn’t give start to it.
And maybe nothing reveals the gap between Christianity’s origins and its up to date Western expression extra starkly than Christmas — the start story of a Palestinian Jew, a baby of this land who was born lengthy earlier than trendy borders and identities emerged.
What the West product of Christmas
Within the West, Christmas is a cultural market. It’s commercialised, romanticised and wrapped in layers of sentimentality. Lavish gift-giving overshadows any concern for the poor. The season has turn into a efficiency of abundance, nostalgia, and consumerism — a vacation stripped of its theological and ethical core.
Even the acquainted traces of the Christmas track Silent Night time obscure the true nature of the story: Jesus was not born into serenity however into upheaval.
He was born below navy occupation, to a household displaced by an imperial decree, in a area dwelling below the shadow of violence. The holy household had been compelled to flee as refugees as a result of the infants of Bethlehem, in accordance with the Gospel narrative, had been massacred by a fearful tyrant decided to protect his reign. Sound acquainted?
Certainly, Christmas is a narrative of empire, injustice and the vulnerability of unusual individuals caught in its path.
Bethlehem: Creativeness vs actuality
For a lot of within the West, Bethlehem – the birthplace of Jesus – is a spot of creativeness — a postcard from antiquity, frozen in time. The “little city” is remembered as a quaint village from scripture slightly than a dwelling, respiration metropolis with precise individuals, with a definite historical past and tradition.
Bethlehem at the moment is surrounded by partitions and checkpoints constructed by an occupier. Its residents dwell below a system of apartheid and fragmentation. Many really feel reduce off, not solely from Jerusalem – which the occupier doesn’t permit them to go to – but additionally from the worldwide Christian creativeness that venerates Bethlehem’s previous whereas usually ignoring its current.
This sentiment additionally explains why so many within the West, whereas celebrating Christmas, care little in regards to the Christians of Bethlehem. Even worse, many embrace theologies and political attitudes that erase or dismiss our presence totally in an effort to help Israel, the empire of at the moment.
In these frameworks, historical Bethlehem is cherished as a sacred thought, however trendy Bethlehem — with its Palestinian Christians struggling and struggling to outlive — is an inconvenient actuality that must be ignored.
This disconnect issues. When Western Christians overlook that Bethlehem is actual, they disconnect from their religious roots. And after they overlook that Bethlehem is actual, additionally they overlook that the story of Christmas is actual.
They overlook that it unfolded amongst a individuals who lived below empire, who confronted displacement, who longed for justice, and who believed that God was not distant however amongst them.
What Christmas means for Bethlehem
So what does Christmas appear to be when advised from the angle of the individuals who nonetheless dwell the place all of it started — the Palestinian Christians? What which means does it maintain for a tiny neighborhood that has preserved its religion for 2 millennia?
At its coronary heart, Christmas is the story of the solidarity of God.
It’s the story of God who doesn’t rule from afar, however is current among the many individuals and takes the facet of these on the margins. The incarnation — the assumption that God took on flesh — just isn’t a metaphysical abstraction. It’s a radical assertion about the place God chooses to dwell: in vulnerability, in poverty, among the many occupied, amongst these with no energy besides the ability of hope.
Within the Bethlehem story, God identifies not with emperors however with these struggling below empire — its victims. God comes not as a warrior however as an toddler. God is current not in a palace however in a manger. That is divine solidarity in its most hanging type: God joins essentially the most weak a part of humanity.
Christmas, then, is the proclamation of a God who confronts the logic of empire.
For Palestinians at the moment, this isn’t merely theology — it’s lived expertise. After we learn the Christmas story, we recognise our personal world: the census that compelled Mary and Joseph to journey resembles the permits, checkpoints and bureaucratic controls that form our day by day lives at the moment. The holy household’s flight resonates with the hundreds of thousands of refugees who’ve fled wars throughout our area. Herod’s violence echoes within the violence we see round us.
Christmas is a Palestinian story par excellence.
A message to the world
Bethlehem celebrates Christmas for the primary time after two years with out public festivities. It was painful but obligatory for us to cancel our celebrations; we had no alternative.
A genocide was unfolding in Gaza, and as individuals who nonetheless dwell within the homeland of Christmas, we couldn’t fake in any other case. We couldn’t rejoice the start of Jesus whereas youngsters his age had been being pulled useless from the rubble.
Celebrating this season doesn’t imply the struggle, the genocide, or the buildings of apartheid have ended. Individuals are nonetheless being killed. We’re nonetheless besieged.
As an alternative, our celebration is an act of resilience — a declaration that we’re nonetheless right here, that Bethlehem stays the capital of Christmas, and that the story this city tells should proceed.
At a time when Western political discourse more and more weaponises Christianity as a marker of cultural identification — usually excluding the very individuals amongst whom Christianity was born — it’s vital to return to the roots of this story.
This Christmas, our invitation to the worldwide church — and to Western Christians specifically — is to recollect the place the story started. To do not forget that Bethlehem just isn’t a fantasy however a spot the place individuals nonetheless dwell. If the Christian world is to honour the which means of Christmas, it should flip its gaze to Bethlehem — not the imagined one, however the actual one, a city whose individuals at the moment nonetheless cry out for justice, dignity and peace.
To recollect Bethlehem is to do not forget that God stands with the oppressed — and that the followers of Jesus are known as to do the identical.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
