The War on Christmas

Christmas has been canceled. In Gaza. Across the West Bank. And in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.

I would say it’s unprecedented. But we’ve been here once before:

The First Christmas.

When Jesus was born, he was born under occupation.

On the run.

Displaced.

And under the specter of genocide.

Obviously, Christmas has come to mean many, many things to us. But a memorial of the brutal Roman occupation and mass infanticide is rarely the organizing theme of our holy days.

A Political Birthday Party

Like today, it was a political time. And Jesus’s was a deeply political birth.

When Mary heard the news, she even sent out what would be one of the very first and most controversial tweets in history about how she’d just become the chairwoman and principal investor of her son’s new venture.

And what was it that Jesus was born to do?

Doctor?

No.

Lawyer?

No.

Tech founder?

(Well, I would argue that he introduced a new operating system. But, mostly no.)

Mary said her baby’s business was to be about knocking tyrants off their thrones.

Pulling victims from the rubble.

And lavishing the hungry.

There’s a lot of debate about what it means for Israel to be God’s chosen people.

But Mary seems to have seen those promises as being for “Abraham and his offspring forever”, accounting for pretty much everyone in the region.

In fact, the first century Forbes obit on Jesus many years later, commenting on his work among Jews and Palestinians, credited him with “making the two groups one and destroying the dividing wall of hostility."

Which brings us back to today.

If This Was the First Christmas

If this was the first Christmas…

And we were the magi traveling from Iran to find the emir who would overthrow the occupation… 

We’d follow the white phosphorus bombs hanging like so many stars in the midnight sky...

Awe at the angels announcing “peace on earth” over the Iron Wall as foreign snipers fire on Gazan shepherds.

And dig for the imam’s manger in the rubble of Rafah.

Then again, if this was the first Christmas…

Before the commercials and carols; and before the creeds paper over his political dissidence, one may not want to risk their life or livelihood digging for peace in the rubble at all.

With so many saying, “Can anything good come out of Gaza?” one might even choose the empire’s massacre of the innocents instead.

If only we could know what we would have done that first Christmas.

To support freedom from occupation.

To love victims of genocide and displacement.

Maybe Christmas would not be canceled.

I fear we’ve already killed the prince of peace in Gaza. But in case we haven’t, I am grateful for this community and all your efforts to find, feed, and shelter him and all his people…

For peace on earth,

Jeremy Courtney
CEO
HUMANITE Peace Collective

PS — Our team is still hard at work delivering food, clothes, and toys to our Christian and Muslim neighbors across Gaza. If you want to help us this Christmas, you can join us here.