The Christmas season is upon us with its religious observances, festive atmosphere, and commercial enterprise. This composite of stories is drawn from the Christian Bible and aligned and framed over millennia within ancient Western and Eastern cultural traditions.
Such has been the effective marketing of Christmas that it is becoming exceedingly difficult to extract the Christian story and centre the Christ child from the glitz, overconsumption, and commercialisation.
Take, for example, lost amongst the tinsel, ham, and office Christmas parties is the fact that the first family of the Christian Church were refugees. They, like millions of families today, were forced to flee their home country because of a negative root cause, a life-threatening situation.
Joseph, Mary, and Jesus fled from Bethlehem to Egypt to avoid the murderous intent of the political dictator called Herod the Great. Matthew 2:13-15:
“Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Africa was not only at the centre of the Nativity story but also an example of the historical need to accommodate the forced migration of families. “The majority of African migrants move within Africa, and while much of this movement of people is normal and regular, negative root causes remain the major drivers of irregular migration across the continent,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.
Having been called Grinch or party-pooper by scores of family members, friends, and colleagues, I place the birth of Jesus, the Child, in the centre of human need and crisis. The good news (the gospel) necessitates a context of bad happenings; sin and evil are symbiotic in the human condition.
While we should not deny the human psychological and cultural need to celebrate, we should also take time to participate in the relief of others who are less fortunate than we are. As of the end of 2023, 47.2 million children had been displaced due to conflict and violence. There is ample opportunity for us to do good as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child and the advent of our Saviour and Lord, who was and is good news to the poor.
Rev. Ronald A. Nathan is a public theologian and an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
