Christmas is not a Western story – it is a Palestinian one

Every December, overmuch of the Christian satellite enters a acquainted rhythm of celebration: carols, lights, decorated trees, user frenzy and the lukewarm imagery of a snowy night. In the United States and Europe, nationalist sermon often speaks of “Western Christian values”, oregon adjacent the vague conception of “Judeo-Christian civilisation”. These phrases person go truthful communal that galore assume, astir automatically, that Christianity is inherently a Western religion — an look of European culture, past and identity.

It is not.

Christianity is, and has ever been, a West Asian / Middle Eastern religion. Its geography, culture, worldview and founding stories are rooted successful this onshore — among peoples, languages and societal structures that look acold much similar those successful today’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan than thing imagined successful Europe. Even Judaism, invoked successful the word “Judeo-Christian values”, is itself a thoroughly Middle Eastern phenomenon. The West received Christianity — it surely did not springiness commencement to it.

And possibly thing reveals the region betwixt Christianity’s origins and its modern Western look much starkly than Christmas — the commencement communicative of a Palestinian Jew, a kid of this onshore who was calved agelong earlier modern borders and identities emerged.

What the West made of Christmas

In the West, Christmas is simply a taste marketplace. It is commercialised, romanticised and wrapped successful layers of sentimentality. Lavish gift-giving overshadows immoderate interest for the poor. The play has go a show of abundance, nostalgia, and consumerism — a vacation stripped of its theological and motivation core.

Even the acquainted lines of the Christmas opus Silent Night obscure the existent quality of the story: Jesus was not calved into serenity but into upheaval.

He was calved nether subject occupation, to a household displaced by an imperial decree, successful a portion surviving nether the shadiness of violence. The beatified household were forced to fly arsenic refugees due to the fact that the infants of Bethlehem, according to the Gospel narrative, were massacred by a fearful tyrant determined to sphere his reign. Sound familiar?

Indeed, Christmas is simply a communicative of empire, injustice and the vulnerability of mean radical caught successful its path.

Bethlehem: Imagination vs reality

For galore successful the West, Bethlehem – the birthplace of Jesus – is simply a spot of imaginativeness — a postcard from antiquity, frozen successful time. The “little town” is remembered arsenic a quaint colony from scripture alternatively than a living, breathing metropolis with existent people, with a chiseled past and culture.

Bethlehem contiguous is surrounded by walls and checkpoints built by an occupier. Its residents unrecorded nether a strategy of apartheid and fragmentation. Many consciousness chopped off, not lone from Jerusalem – which the occupier does not let them to sojourn – but besides from the planetary Christian imaginativeness that venerates Bethlehem’s past portion often ignoring its present.

This sentiment besides explains wherefore truthful galore successful the West, portion celebrating Christmas, attraction small astir the Christians of Bethlehem. Even worse, galore clasp theologies and governmental attitudes that erase oregon disregard our beingness wholly successful bid to enactment Israel, the empire of today.

In these frameworks, past Bethlehem is cherished arsenic a ineffable idea, but modern Bethlehem — with its Palestinian Christians suffering and struggling to past — is an inconvenient world that needs to beryllium ignored.

This disconnect matters. When Western Christians hide that Bethlehem is real, they disconnect from their spiritual roots. And erstwhile they hide that Bethlehem is real, they besides hide that the communicative of Christmas is real.

They hide that it unfolded among a radical who lived nether empire, who faced displacement, who longed for justice, and who believed that God was not distant but among them.

What Christmas means for Bethlehem

So what does Christmas look similar erstwhile told from the position of the radical who inactive unrecorded wherever it each began — the Palestinian Christians? What meaning does it clasp for a tiny assemblage that has preserved its religion for 2 millennia?

At its heart, Christmas is the communicative of the solidarity of God.

It is the communicative of God who does not regularisation from afar, but is contiguous among the radical and takes the broadside of those connected the margins. The incarnation — the content that God took connected soma — is not a metaphysical abstraction. It is simply a extremist connection astir wherever God chooses to dwell: successful vulnerability, successful poverty, among the occupied, among those with nary powerfulness but the powerfulness of hope.

In the Bethlehem story, God identifies not with emperors but with those suffering nether empire — its victims. God comes not arsenic a warrior but arsenic an infant. God is contiguous not successful a palace but successful a manger. This is divine solidarity successful its astir striking form: God joins the astir susceptible portion of humanity.

Christmas, then, is the proclamation of a God who confronts the logic of empire.

For Palestinians today, this is not simply theology — it is lived experience. When we work the Christmas story, we recognise our ain world: the census that forced Mary and Joseph to question resembles the permits, checkpoints and bureaucratic controls that signifier our regular lives today. The beatified family’s formation resonates with the millions of refugees who person fled wars crossed our region. Herod’s unit echoes successful the unit we spot astir us.

Christmas is simply a Palestinian communicative par excellence.

A connection to the world

Bethlehem celebrates Christmas for the archetypal clip aft 2 years without nationalist festivities. It was achy yet indispensable for america to cancel our celebrations; we had nary choice.

A genocide was unfolding successful Gaza, and arsenic radical who inactive unrecorded successful the homeland of Christmas, we could not unreal otherwise. We could not observe the commencement of Jesus portion children his property were being pulled dormant from the rubble.

Celebrating this play does not mean the war, the genocide, oregon the structures of apartheid person ended. People are inactive being killed. We are inactive besieged.

Instead, our solemnisation is an enactment of resilience — a declaration that we are inactive here, that Bethlehem remains the superior of Christmas, and that the communicative this municipality tells indispensable continue.

At a clip erstwhile Western governmental sermon progressively weaponises Christianity arsenic a marker of taste individuality — often excluding the precise radical among whom Christianity was calved — it is captious to instrumentality to the roots of this story.

This Christmas, our invitation to the planetary religion — and to Western Christians successful peculiar — is to retrieve wherever the communicative began. To retrieve that Bethlehem is not a story but a spot wherever radical inactive live. If the Christian satellite is to honour the meaning of Christmas, it indispensable crook its regard to Bethlehem — not the imagined one, but the existent one, a municipality whose radical contiguous inactive outcry retired for justice, dignity and peace.

To retrieve Bethlehem is to retrieve that God stands with the oppressed — and that the followers of Jesus are called to bash the same.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.