‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’
The lamenting words of the Prophet Jeremiah are an integral part of the first Christmas story. They are quoted in Saint Matthew’s Gospel to describe the weeping of mothers over the massacre of their children by King Herod who felt insecure and threatened in his rule in Judea.
Death, weeping and the inconsolable laments of mothers, and the violence of the capricious and the despotic, have long been part and parcel of the religious, political and social history of the region that has become known as the ‘Holy Land.’ Today, Ramah is a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank, on the north-east edges of Jerusalem, but isolated from its neighbours by the Israeli-built ‘security wall’.
The massacre of the innocent children, the Christmas Gospel says, came after the visit of the Wise Men from the East, but only after Joseph had managed to flee from Bethlehem with Mary and the new-born Christ Child, finding refuge in Egypt.
The Christmas cribs and decorations in brightly decorated windows and shopfronts for the past few weeks appear distant and disconnected from that first Christmas story, which is always challenging and discomforting. The only bright light is the star over Bethlehem, but that first Christmas story is one of a family on the move, far from home and without home comforts, unable to find affordable accommodation and eventually forced to flee as refugees.
Indeed, the first Christmas story finds echoes in today’s heartbreaking reality for many on the move: mothers weeping for their children, families grieving for their loved ones, in Gaza, in kibbutzim across southern Israel, throughout the West Bank. The violence that has continued for eleven weeks since October 7th renders meaningless many plans to celebrate Christmas in the coming days in the land of the birth of Christ.
The daily news from the Middle East has made many of us forget the other dark news that continued to engulf the world throughout this year: the continuing war in Ukraine and Russia and the new refugee crisis it has created throughout Europe; accelerating climate change that has made this the hottest year on record; the looming prospect of Donald Trump’s return to office; the rise of the far-right across Europe; and the increasing antipathy towards refugees, expressed in the legislative priorities of the British government, last month’s riots on the streets of inner-city Dublin, the burning of an hotel in Co Galway and low-level but persistent and pernicious protests throughout Ireland.
Those who claim their aggressive and confrontational attitude to refugees and migrants is rooted not in prejudice and intolerance but in traditional values, need to be reminded again that – as a Meme that is popular this year says – the traditional Christmas story rejoices in the birth of a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern, undocumented migrant child.
Those who would say No to the refugees at the door of their local hotel reflect the attitude of that innkeeper who says there is no room for a family on the move and not the values that would be proclaimed by the child born at Christmas. When Donald Trump ranted in New Hampshire last weekend and again in Iowa this week about immigrants coming to the US ‘destroying the fabric’ and ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ bringing crime and disease, he was reflecting the values of a cruel and despotic Herod and repeating words in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and denying the priorities expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.
But the Christmas story remains persistently the story of hope coming into a world racked by violence, of light breaking into a world shrouded in darkness; it is the promise of rest for the sleepless, of peace in times of war and oppression, of sanctuary for refugees on the move, of joy in the midst of sorrow. The hope Christmas brings has inspired some of the greatest works of art in Western culture, from paintings and poetry to song and stained-glass. It is, as the Poet Laureate John Betjeman once said, ‘the most tremendous tale of all.’
Following the death of Shane MacGowan earlier this month, the Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ has a new-found popularity this Christmas and almost became this year’s Christmas No 1. It is a song filled with images of poverty, pathos and despair, and with images of the downward spiral that fills so many with dread at this time of the year: couples and families, the elderly and the lonely, those whose dreams have been shattered and stolen.
Yet, some lyrics in this song also summarise the hopes that so many cling to in the season of Christmas:
I’ve got a feeling
This year’s for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true.
This full-length Christmas editorial is published in The Irish Times today (23 December 2023)
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