A Christmas reflection
RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – All religions are, at their core, about us—real people living in the world, trying to make sense of our joy and sorrow, fears and hopes. The scriptural stories, when stripped down to their essential message, teach us beautiful lessons about how we should see our lives.
The Christmas narrative, for example, is about the birth of Jesus, but it’s much more than that. If you listen to the scriptural stories closely (both Christian and Muslim) and place real people in the story, it comes to life and speaks about the profound and transformative reality of birth.
In the “Silent Night” version of the Christmas narrative, Mary smiles while Joseph hovers protectively over mother and child. Animals provide warmth; angels sing; and shepherds visit the ”babe in the manger.” All is pure and bright.
A comfortable story, but it’s not real
If we consider the actual circumstances of the birth, a very different story emerges. Joseph and Mary had traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem because they were required to comply with an imperial edict to be counted in a census. The 80-mile trip covered on foot and donkey’s back was arduous and long, taking at least five days. With Mary more than eight months pregnant, it must have also been quite frightening and painful.
Arriving at their destination and finding no room, they were forced to bed down in a stable—which in Bethlehem meant a cave where the animals were housed. The experience must have been both humiliating and difficult.
At this point, the gospel stories fall silent and so our imagination, by default, leaps from their arrival in Bethlehem to the scene of Mary holding the child. In Surat Maryam, however, the Quran provides us with the missing piece of the story, one which agrees with unwritten Christian tradition. As the time of birth nears Mary goes off by herself and when labour grows intense, she cries out: ”Would that I had died before this!” A young girl, frightened, alone, and in pain.
Weeks later fearing for their newborn’s life because of an angry Herod, Mary and Joseph were forced to flee to Egypt—again by foot and donkey—where they lived in exile for years.
Considering all this, instead of the idealised pristine myth, we are confronted with a very different reality—a child born to a frightened and exhausted woman, in a filthy cave.
A few years back I received an envelope containing what appeared to be a holiday greeting card from Walid Jumblatt—the Lebanese Druze leader. Opening it, I was stunned to find a picture of an anguished child peering out through the slats of a destroyed structure. Inside, the card read ”Remember the wretched of the earth.” I recoiled at the disconnect between the other joyous cards I had been receiving and this image of pain and sorrow.
The image of that little face stayed with me. I thought of Mary’s tired and dirtied face at the end of her trip along Palestine’s dusty roads, of her fear and pain, and of that little family fleeing to Egypt. They were the wretched of the earth.
What then came to mind were the hundreds of Palestinians born each day in Gaza’s devastated squalor or in exile in refugee camps; the babies born to Syrian refugees in their camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, or in transit in Europe; and their frightened parents, concerned for their newborns’ safety and survival. And I thanked Walid for reminding me of what we should never forget.
The Christmas story should not be stripped of its humanity. Its reality focuses our attention on our responsibility to see in the birth of Jesus: the faces of the outcasts for whom there is no room in the inn; the wretched for whom there is no comfort; and the frightened exiles who seek only safety and refuge.
Only then can we understand the story and spirit of Christmas. When we sing the seasonal songs of joy, we should think of them not as depictions of reality, but as aspirational—representing the vision of the world we hope to create for all children—ours and those wretched and frightened little ones too often forgotten.
Source: The Arab Weekly