Maryam

Christmas is the feast of the weak.

Today, Christmas Eve, 2023, I held my first grandchild in my arms once again. She is six weeks old and perfect, and it was sheer wonder to see how little she needed to still her hunger and to carry her around till she slept.

I just saw an interview on TV of the Moroccan author Abdelkader Benali. He told the story of Maryam, to whom an entire book of the Quran is dedicated. Maryam, who retires into the desert when she is unaccountably pregnant, because she isn’t a girl of ill repute. No, said God, you aren’t a girl of ill repute, but you will bear a prophet. She is given water when she is thirsty, and when she is hungry, there is a fig tree that lowers its branches so she can pick the fruits to eat. Traditionally, the fruits of the fig tree are important for safe childbirth. 

 

Maryam, an old Persian miniature (Wikipedia)

 

The Quran story is different from ours, but not very much. No different from Mary and the ox, and the ass, and the child in a crib. That also is a story of poor people, of refugees, of weak ones who can only find refuge in a stable, between the beasts breathing softly and giving warmth so the child won’t go cold.

It may well be that this child was a Palestinian child, over 2000 years ago.

I won’t say that all Palestinians are without guilt. But when I think of the Palestinian children in Gaza, who have been bombarded for months in revenge for an horrible act of terror, I feel cold. Starry-eyed children, innocent little ones, of whom by now over eight thousand were slaughtered by a revenge exercise that even the vengeful God of the Old Testament couldn’t have thought of.

 

Christmas 2023. Drawing by Emad Hajjaj.

 

And then there are the three Wise Men from the east. The wise men who were led by a star that appeared in the sky. Wise men who may have come from Afghanistan, or Iran, or possibly from the North African desert, to pay tribute. Those people are nowadays locked up in what amounts to concentration camps, as they aren’t welcome anymore in Europe, as laid down in the new Migration Pact. The Christmas story is acted out again day after day, even now. But we haven’t learned a thing.

The churches in Bethlehem are empty in 2023, because no one goes there anymore. “How can we illuminate a Christmas tree whilst Palestinians in Gaza are killed in their thousands?” Ashraf Tannous says, a Palestinian preacher in the Lutheran church of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem. 

 

The child Jesus in a pile of rubble. Source: NOS.

 

In the Lutheran church of Bethlehem, the child Jesus normally lies in a crib in the stable, surrounded by Joseph and Mary and the three Wise Men from the east. The child is now pictured in a pile of rubble, wrapped in a keffiyeh, the Palestinian shawl which emphasises its Palestinian identity. It reminds us of the thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza, killed by the bombardments.

Christmas is the feast of the weak. Let us spare them a thought when we sit at the Christmas dinner.