Earlier this month this newspaper published a story called the politics of Christmas. In actual fact, it was about the non-politics of Christmas as recounted by six different politicians! All those interviewed wanted to celebrate Christmas by taking a break from politics to spend some quality time with their loved ones. Christmas was the time when they could be apolitical.
One can understand this sentiment as everyone wants to take a break from what one usually does; but I suspect that this sentiment about the apoliticality of Christmas is a widely spread sentiment.
A 2011 survey commissioned by Theos – the British think-tank which seeks to influence public opinion about the role of faith and belief in society – found that the vast majority of Britons think that Christmas is about spending time with family and friends while another majority put in generosity towards others as its second characteristic.
Religion gets in as a distant third. Those who chose this option believe that Christmas is there to celebrate God’s love for humanity. On the opposite side of the scale, an equivalent number think that Christmas doesn’t have any religious meaning.
Should Christmas be the time when we challenge economic injustice or political oppression?
Very few Britons – Christians or otherwise – think that Christmas is bereft of any political and economic dimensions. It seems that Christmas and politics do not mix.
But should it be like that? Isn’t Christmas a political feast par excellence?
In the Anglo-Saxon world, Christmas was reinvented as a family feast in the mid-19th century. It was perhaps no coincidence that the first Christmas card designed by J C Horsley is a contemporary of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The card showed a middle-class family celebrating the Christmas feast with images of charity on both sides.
That family/charity syndrome is still dominant today. In a similar way, Dickens ends his story with the Cratchits happily celebrating Christmas thanks to the surprising generosity of Scrooge, the miser-turned-philanthropist.
For the Victorians and subsequent generations, Christmas was turned into an occasion to get cocooned in the comfort bubble of the family. People metaphorically fasten their perceptual doors to keep out the tempestuous political or economic vicissitudes that happen to be raging in the cruel world, outside their homes. The transformation of Christmas into the prototypical apolitical family festivity celebrating middle class and consumer values is ably described in Stephen Nissenbaum’s social history book The Battle for Christmas.
Christmas became the glorification of alienation – bar an important exception in the forms of solidarity with the ‘less fortunate’ – what a paternalistic term!
Christmas becomes a soother of consciences, thanks to the trumping up of the dual themes of generosity and solidarity with the vulnerable. But then we do not care to ask about the socio-economic structures that create and perpetuate the existence of these ‘less fortunate’.
It does not cross our minds to think of Christmas as the season to challenge the political and economic roots of the structures which perpetuate injustice.
Dom Hélder Câmara, the famous reformist Archbishop of Recife in Brazil, once said: “When I give food to the poor they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor have no food they call me a Communist.”
Pope Francis, in his recent apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, clearly sings the praises of politicisation of Christianity by emphasising the social dimension and content of evangelisation. His discourse is in contrast with the typically apolitical right-wing jargon that hijacked the dominant discourse on the public square since the fall of the Soviet Union, the concomitant apparent ‘final’ victory of the capitalist system and Ayn Rand’s glorification of egoistic individualism.
The Pope writes, for example, about the belief “that the Son of God assumed our human flesh means that each human person has been taken up into the very heart of God”, and thus an infinite dignity has been bestowed on every human person.
The Infancy Narratives in Luke and Matthew – the four Gospels, rather – show us that the birth of Jesus was an event of great political importance. Before this event, a baby became King, but it was the only time in history when a King became a baby.
The birth of Jesus turned things on their head, heralded a new way of doing things and of structuring society. Authority became an exercise in service, not imposition; the ‘we’ replaced the ‘I’; the poor became the privileged; the emarginated were pushed centre stage.
Jesus did not become man to leave things as they were. His message is the most radical ever preached. He socialised with outcasts, traitors and sinners.
Both Jews and pagans were welcome to him. Women, some of them not of best repute, formed part of his genealogy, as did foreigners, thus emphasising his universality. He was not born in the city but in its outskirts. The city had no place for him. He similarly died outside of the city.
We should strive to put Christ back into Christian
The first who gave witness to his birth were shepherds, whose position in society placed them among its dregs, and the first to bear witness of his resurrection was a woman. He thus made a strong comment contradicting society’s downgrading of women.
He was an asylum seeker as well as a reject of the respectable religious establishment. He had a good word for everyone but only harsh words for the hypocrites, and no word at all for the tyrant.
It is unfortunate that the radicalism of God’s intervention into the history of humanity by becoming part of it, is diminished by Christians who describe it as if it was just a divine mission to save individual souls. The social and political dimensions of the birth of Christ and his message cannot be put aside.
Our celebration of Christmas should therefore involve these social and political dimensions.
My appeal for the politicisation of Christmas is not an appeal for the party political shenanigans or for the perpetuation of the ordinary political chit-chat that characterise our political discourse.
It is an eye-opener, stating that the reduction of Christmas to a nice family occasion leads to the denudation of its dignity.
And that fund-raising for charity, important as it is in a world dominated by injustice, will only get us so far. It will definitively not get us far enough.
Let’s not just be content with the slogan ‘Put Christ back into Christmas’. Rather, we should strive to put Christ back into Christian.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt