Save for the occasional Scrooge, most of us look forward to the Christmas holiday season. As colourful decorations and lights line our homes and the streets, and stores become crowded with holiday shoppers, we keep referring to the "Christmas spirit".
At its roots, Christmas is, of course, a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the name itself being a shortened form of Christ's Mass. However, most adults in advanced countries now believe the religious side of Christmas is less prominent than in the past; and surprisingly, most are not overly concerned about the religious decline of the Christmas season.
Over the years, Christmas has become less a religious holiday and more a cultural one ̶ a time for giving presents and gift giving. This is due to the secular commercialisation of Christmas ̶ companies using the Christmas holiday for financial gain. The result is a reduced focus on the original religious aspects of the season and more on acquiring the latest and best products for close friends and family.
Lately, a YouTube video has been circulating of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Melloni boasting that this year she has put up the crib, rather than the Christmas Tree she was keen on for 40 years. The right-wing political overtones were sickening. So, in reaction, I wholeheartedly disagree with the rhetoric that Christmas should be associated only with religion, just as I object to society's obsessively materialistic interpretation of the holiday.
Christmas has evolved from a celebration of Christ's birth to also become am occasion to be with family, friends and loved ones. It can be a time for reconciliation and friendship, a time to come together at the end of a long and strenuous year, simply to be grateful for what we have and what we have yet to receive. Christmas is neither a box of religion nor a box of materialistic gain ̶ both kill its spirit altogether.
This is what Christmas should be about. Conservative commentators enjoy ranting about the "War on Christmas" or efforts to rid the Christmas season of its religious roots through phrases such as "happy holidays" as opposed to "Merry Christmas". As is his wont, this year President Trump waded into the debate by claiming that he has single-handedly kept Christmas alive and that "now everybody's saying Merry Christmas again". On the other hand, many liberals point out that the pervasive cult surrounding Christmas often serves to erase other culture's wintertime holidays.
Once upon a time ̶ five years ago, to be exact ̶ Christmas, Hanukkah, and Ramadan all fell on the same days. The entire world resounded with cross congratulations. One could say that it was a holiday miracle where people of different faiths could wish joy and peace to anyone, no matter what they celebrated.
It reminds me of "Three Holidays and a Wedding". The Canadian writer Uzma Jalaluddin penned this best-seller for the American book market, which releases Christmas-themed books as gifts to the masses every year. Jalaluddin's novel narrates the friendship and romance of a group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims who are stranded in a hotel in a snowstorm, where they are forced to spend the holidays.
The promotional material for the novel included a teaser for readers of "The Matzah Ball", a 2021 Christmas hit written by Jean Meltzer that tells the terrible, nerdy secret of Rachel Rubinstein-Goldblatt ̶ a young Jewish woman: she loves Christmas. Those moved by Meltzer's interfaith crossover delight in Jalaluddin's ecumenical friendship and romance.
Jalaluddin is a Muslim, an energetic columnist for the Toronto Star and one of the generation of children of immigrants who try their hardest to reconcile their parents' culture with the Western world in which they have grown up. She is, therefore, the perfect author to square the circle of such an ecumenical matter. After all, the right Christmas narrative is not to persecute a secularized public, but to invite non-Christian believers into the spirit of the feast,
As a liberal Christian, I believe that the Dickens of today should not seek to redeem their Muslim and Jewish neighbours like they did Scrooge in the old. It doesn't matter what we call it, they come to say: all parties have lights and gifts for the children. So, let's celebrate together and go hand in hand to the festivities.
It seems a strange call to make when last Sunday, two Islamic State gunmen killed 15 people, targeting Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, while two jihadist gunmen killed two Christians and wounded several others in southeast Nigeria three weeks ago. But the list of horrors includes Christians killing people of other faith as well, such as the massacre by the Russian Wagner Group a year ago of 22 people belonging to the Fulani pastoral community and other Sunni Muslims in the Central African Republic.
Speaking of books about Christmas, I am also reminded of "The Christmas Tram" by the Sicilian author Giosuè Calaciura. A tram, imagined as an island of light in the darkness of Christmas Eve, travels through the far outskirts of a town. Fragile, abandoned, and poor people who have finished their day board the tram ̶ the prostitute deported from Africa, her unfortunate client, the illegal immigrant living by his wits, the artist overcome by illness, the nurse besieged by loneliness, the man who can't put together dinner for his partner and daughter.
The passengers head toward the Christmas Eve that awaits them or simply doesn't. Each of them has his or her thoughts and memories about their personal complicated stories, mysterious yet imbued with helplessness and rage. Unbeknown to the indifferent tram driver, the journey gathers them all, like a travelling nativity scene which might deliver salvation, even though each of them feels there is no salvation outside that Christmas tram.
In his highly lyrical prose, Calaciura conveys the urgency, depth, and contradictions of our times. Like Dickens in "A Christmas Carol," the author's aim is to affirm that society has an indispensable human essence and to demonstrate its tenacious desire to exist. Calaciura succeeds in speaking about the underprivileged with an extraordinary sensitivity, giving life to a tale suspended between enchantment and wonder.
And this, to my mind, is the purpose of Christmas. It is about celebrating the birth of Christ, the child of an underprivileged couple, born in a manger where the only source of heating were the cow and the donkey, welcomed only by a few unkempt shepherds. The old versions of Musk, Zuckerberg, and Trump didn't notice, indeed wouldn't have been invited. Mind you, there were The Three Kings ̶ a misnomer really, because most scholars think they were astrologers. Be that as it may, only one was a white European, the other two being of Asiatic and African origins.
The Magi brought priceless gifts to lay at Jesus's feet, putting gift-giving at the core of Christmas celebrations. With the right attitude, giving gifts at Christmas can be more than just a tradition. Giving freely of one's own resources is an opportunity to honour others, be they family or strangers, Maltese or foreigners.
Christmas brings happiness to most people. Just thinking about the holidays or seeing festive imagery has a positive influence on our emotions. In an experiment, Denmark researcher Brad Haddock showed two groups of people ̶ those who celebrate Christmas and those who don't ̶ images of holiday themes while they underwent a brain scan. The front of the brain lit up for those who celebrated Christmas as the holiday images flashed before their eyes, showing that there is a "holiday spirit network" in the brain.
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Although happiness is something that is not easily measurable quantitatively, Haddock claims that the study fits in with the idea that thinking about something can elicit an associated response, "because it was a response to images of Christmas, not really Christmas, that we used as a stimulus".
Dr Patrick Keelan, a psychologist in Canada, adds that the reason for cheerfulness during holidays goes beyond decorations and imagery. "People feel happy because it's a time that emphasizes family bonding," he says.
What with the depressing international political scene, terrorism, wars, hate speech, genocides, pariah states threatening Europe, the normalisation of violence, and dozens of other disorders, it is easy to succumb to depression. So, there's nothing wrong in taking a break from the stress and burnout of the year, and just wallow for a few days in the nostalgia, the warmth and the social bonding that Christmas brings.