I WAS in something of a quandary upon reading that, because of a lack of money, Christmas in Bethlehem will be celebrated without all the usual trimmings. While a part of me sympathised with the city's 40,000 inhabitants who, it would appear, feel belittled in the eyes of the world by having to rely on the donation of a Christmas free and decorations from Finland, another part rejoiced that Bethlehem this year will be spared the tinsel and the fur-coated Santas, so much a part of its previous annual celebrations.
And I was forced to wonder why that city, which holds in safe-keeping such shrines of Christian pilgrimage as the Manger Square and Church of the Nativity, would want to adopt a glitzy approach to the celebration of the birth of Jesus in the first place, and how an occasion renowned for the simplicity of its first occurrence could have become so complicated and so very dependent upon artificial enhancement.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that, while primitive Christianity regarded the birth of Jesus as a significant moment, the church did not observe a festival for the celebration of the event until the 4th century - a sufficient time-lapse to allow the occasion be endowed with a little added value, no doubt.
In medieval Europe, for example, it was celebrated alongside folk customs and perpetuated with festivities connected with the winter solstice. Indeed, when Prince Albert introduced the Christmas free into England from his native Germany, it had already achieved symbolic status on mainland Europe in a number of winter celebrations.
But it was only with the Industrial Revolution that Christmas became truly commercialised, an event capable of, spawning marketable enterprise. Such development had the effect of pushing back the Christmas festivities to the weeks before December 25th to allow more shopping days, so that the traditional face of Advent was changed from one of quiet preparation to one of ruthless business.
It is in this way Christmas has evolved from being a community celebration of simple faith to one wherein, as recently articulated in a survey undertaken in the UK, people feel compelled to spend time with relatives they do not like and to spend money on presents they cannot afford. "Post festive syndrome" is now, it seems, a traumatic disorder forcing one in five people to seek their doctor's help in the period immediately after Christmas.
So where have we gone wrong? How have we emptied the Christmas message and the Christmas feast of original meaning? Why have we sought, consciously or unconsciously, to trivialise, romanticise and, ultimately, secularise ii deep profession of faith?
St Nicholas was a bishop of the early Christian church of Myra, in Lycia, Anatolia (which is now Turkey), with a reputation for generosity and compassion best exemplified in the legend that relates to how he saved from a life of prostitution the three daughters of a poor man. On three separate occasions, its said, the bishop tossed a bag of gold through the family's window, thus providing a dowry to procure for each daughter an honourable marriage. That story provides one foundation for the custom of giving gifts at Christmas time, and while variations on that good man's name have ranged from Sant Nikolaas to Sante Klaas to Santa Claus, the underlying theme of his action - giving hope to those who hunger for it - has remained the same.
It is very obvious, then, that in the stories associated with Christmas we have very real social and political commentary. Even in the apparently idyllic Christmas story - of a child in a crib in Bethlehem - there is an underlying message of table-turning priorities, of revising societal values. Perhaps it is that we haven't properly understood it. Or maybe we just don't want to be reminded of it.
When we speak about "the holy infant so tender and mild", for example, or when we gaze upon the happy family in the holy pictures, do we close our, eyes to the image of an infant crying in his very human misery, cold in his crib, wrapped in the rags of poverty? For if we do, we also close our ears to his message of Good News.
The original story of Christmas, then, legendary in its details, is anything but an innocuous account of the birth of a child called Jesus. And at each anniversary of his birth, we are given the opportunity to see anew and celebrate the true significance of his life not characterised by detailed political prescriptions and programmes, but one in which, by the very manner of his speech, his action and the nature of his suffering, Jesus set up an absolutely concrete standard at which we, in our individual and social action, could confidently aim.
Why, then, does our emulation of him and our celebration of his birth have to be cloaked in a garishness unbecoming? Why do we turn a simple festival into an expensive feast? Why do we not choose to remember that, in opting to be born in a stable, Jesus identified with the poor and exalted the humble?
SO let us not lose sight of his life, and its call to action, amidst the hullabaloo of the Yuletide festivities. Let us instead seek to make of the occasion this year something more than just an opportunity for excess. Let us bear witness to the humble circumstances of the original Christmas message, and let not the celebration blur the memory. Let us, instead, applaud initiatives like that of the residents of Buckingham Street, in Dublin, who decorated their Christmas tree with 50 stars in memory of family and friends who had died, or were still suffering, from drug abuse. Let us honour the tradition of Kris Kringle and give with our hearts more than with our wallets. And let us reassure the residents of Bethlehem that, just as it was in simplicity that the true peace of Christ first found expression, so can the celebration of that event, and the hope that such peace will find a permanent home in all our hearts, be expressed today without the trimmings.
