Last week, Christian church leaders in the city of Bethlehem announced the cancellation of traditional Christmas festivities in the place traditionally associated with the Jesus’ birth.
And this for at least two obvious reasons. For one, the genocidal killings by colonial settlers in Palestine’s occupied West Bank have made it impossible for tourists to come to Bethlehem.
For another, Palestinian residents of Bethlehem have themselves cancelled festivities in an act of solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Gaza victimized by Apartheid Zionists and their partners in genocide, the United States of America.
But there’s a third reason as well – a theological one that needs highlighting this Christmas weekend.
The motive was explained last Friday on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now.” Ms. Goodman began with a clip of the Reverend Isaac Munther, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem.
Standing before a nativity scene with the figure of Jesus in a keffiyeh surrounded by rubble, Rev. Munther said:
“Christmas is a ray of light and hope from the heart of pain and suffering. Christmas is the radiance of life from the heart of destruction and death. In Gaza, God is under the rubble. He is in the operating room. If Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble. I invite you to see the image of Jesus in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble, in every child struggling for life in destroyed hospitals, in every child in incubators. Christmas celebrations are canceled this year, but Christmas itself is not and will not be canceled, for our hope cannot be canceled.”
Elaborating on that theme, Reverend Mitri Raheb, the president of Bethlehem’s Dar al-Kalima University, offered an explanation that echoed the liberation theology perspective on Palestine that my wife and I encountered in the summer of 2006, when we visited the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
Dr. Raheb is the author of a book with a revealing title, Decolonizing Palestine: the Land, the People, the Bible. Here’s what he said:
“The Christmas story actually is a Palestinian story, par excellence. It talks about a family in Nazareth, in the north of Palestine, that is ordered by an imperial decree of the Romans to evacuate to Bethlehem, to go there and register. And this is exactly what our people in Gaza has been experiencing these 75 days. It talks about Mary, the pregnant woman, on the run, exactly like 50,000 women in Gaza who are actually displaced. Jesus was born actually as a refugee. There was no place at the inn for him to be born, so he was put in a manger. And this is exactly what also the kids that are coming to life these days in Gaza are experiencing. You know, most of the hospitals are damaged, out of service, and so there is no delivery places for all of these pregnant women in Gaza. And then you have the bloodthirsty Herod that ordered to kill the kids in Bethlehem to stay in power. And in Gaza, over 8,000 kids, they have been murdered for Netanyahu to stay in power.
And you have this message that the angels declared here, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on Earth,” which was actually a critique of the empire, because glory belongs to the Almighty and not to the mighty. And the peace that Jesus came to proclaim is not the peace, the Pax Romana, the peace that is based on subjugation and military operation, but on human dignity, equality and justice. And this is actually what we call for. And I have to say I find it really a shame that in this season, where every church hears these words, “peace on Earth,” that the United States is vetoing even a ceasefire. It’s a shame.”
Yes, shame on all of us taxpayers and voters.
So much for “Merry Christmas!” this 2023.
About Things That Matter 
Hi Mike,
The “birth story” is an example of cultural appropriation.
1. The manger was in fact the only warm place in Inns of the day. Because …
2. The inns of the day had no rooms, only alcoves with benches built along the ways used for gathering to talk and for sleeping at night. If there was any warmth, it was from a small stove in the middle of the open space, often not used and not used during the night because …
3. Wood was scarce. So …
4. The manger offered privacy, warmth (from the animals, who were kept there for protect them from the weather), and the birth process would not keep the inn’s visitors up all night.
It’s not “the devil” is in the details (unless one has the goal of propagandizing). In fact, the truth is in the details. And those details can not be seen accurately unless we put ourselves in the other’s shoes.
A query (Quakers love queries): do I put myself in the other’s shoes before I condemn their actions?
Hank
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Nice challenging query, Hank. And the whole matter gets even more complicated when we realize that the birth story is midrash, i.e. an imaginative commentary on and expansion of the expectation that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. as a descendent of King David. I remember the spiritual crisis that realization caused me when I first encountered it as a first year theology student in the seminary.
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