Many years ago, I remember asking school kids during a Christmas programme I was MCing, “So what do you like the most about Christmas?”
Their answers came quickly and excitedly. ‘Cake!’ ‘Carols!’ ‘Christmas tree!’ ‘Santa!’ ‘Gifts!’ ‘Togetherness!’ etc.
After all, what is there not to like about Christmas?
I realise that if someone were to ask me the same question today, I would probably say, “The story of the first Christmas.” Not necessarily the one that reads like a children’s tale, but the original one recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in the New Testament.
Here, in a nutshell, is the Christmas story we are used to:
A young, pregnant Mary and her husband Joseph travelling through the desert for many days, unable to find a place to spend the night in Bethlehem. Finally, an innkeeper says, “There are no rooms in the inn, but you can spend the night in the animals’ stable, if you like.”
And when baby Jesus comes into the world that night, the night sky lights up with a heavenly choir of angels singing and telling shepherds on the nearby hills that their Saviour is born. The story then goes on to talk about a bright star in the sky that leads three wise men from the east to come and worship the newborn king
A charming little story that makes for great picture book reading and provides lovely visuals for Christmas greeting cards.
But as one reads the Nativity story as it has been originally recorded, without the gloss that centuries of tradition have added, one realises just how gritty and harrowing it actually is, set against the backdrop of empire, oppression, and genocide. One also realises how little has changed over the centuries. Which is perhaps why the story continues to resonate two millennia after it was first recorded.
Mary and Joseph came from what we would today call a lower income family (Joseph was a carpenter by profession), and were as subject to the vagaries of a despotic government as the poor are today. (One can’t help but think about the senseless decrees that our very own modern-day rulers have announced in recent times, the currency demonetisation of 2016 in India being a prime example, that affected the poorest sections of society the worst, and impoverished millions.)
Also read: A Colonial Christmas
The reigning Roman emperor of the time, Caesar Augustus, announced a tax census and decreed that all the inhabitants of ancient Palestine return to the place of their birth, necessitating a difficult and hazardous 150-kilometre journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. When Joseph and a very pregnant Mary finally arrived in Bethlehem, the place was packed with all those who had also returned to their hometown. There were no rooms anywhere in any of the inns. Imagine Joseph’s worry and anxiety at the time.
(Again, one is reminded of the heart-rending condition of the lakhs of Indian migrant workers who were forced to leave the major metropolitan cities and walk back to their hometowns and villages in early 2020, following the announcement on national television of a brutal and complete lockdown with only a few hours’ notice. Many died on the way and never made it home.)
Finally, mercifully, an innkeeper took pity on the hapless couple and offered them a place in the corner of the animal’s stable next to his inn where Jesus was born. Poor atmanirbhar (read ‘nearly abandoned’) Mary and Joseph were rescued from having to spend a night out on the streets in the nick of time!
Power does not like to be challenged, and when the puppet king Herod found out that ‘a king had been born’ right under his own nose, he went on a rampage and ordered that all the newborn infants in the region be killed. One can’t but think about the incomprehensible brutality of the Israeli government today and the thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children that have been murdered in the very same region in over the last one year.
Mary and Joseph fled for their lives to the nearby country of Egypt and lived there like refugees till King Herod finally died a couple of years later, not unlike so many today who have been forced to leave their homes and take shelter in other countries (the closest examples geographically being the Rohingyas whom no one seems to want).
And yet, despite all the trauma and tribulation they had to face, Mary, Joseph and little Jesus managed to survive, and the rest, as they say, is history. Whether or not one believes in the divinity of Jesus, the fact remains that the hunted child of a persecuted family grew up to become an itinerant preacher whose teachings of love, compassion, and social justice went on to find resonance throughout the known world of the time and ultimately overturned an empire based on brute force and oppression.
Perhaps there is hope for all of us today, too.
Rohit Kumar is an educator and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.
