FR MARTIN SIRJU
CHRISTMAS IS a victim of its own sentimentality – a young mother and father, baby, shepherds, animals, magi, stars, a stable and crib. Whether all of this is biblical or not it evokes emotion, but also sentimentality. The sentimentality is driven by the commercial success of this Christian feast.
There is a good side to the commercial success for it is indeed a season of “goodwill.” Hampers are given out to the needy in abundance, parties are hosted for children’s homes made possible by generous benefactors, the harshness of daily life is softened by public creches strategically placed, and there is a general feeling of joy, goodwill and thanksgiving.
What we often forget is that Christmas is a “light” feast and is superseded by the greater “light” feast of Easter. But Easter is less commercially exploitable. We have the horrible scene of a man maligned, rejected and crucified, who it is said rose from the dead three days after with a glorified body. Physics is still trying to decipher what Christian faith confidently proclaims.
Not much commercial success, so we bring in the Easter Bunny and butterflies emerging out of cocoons, which have practically nothing to do with Easter. The joy and glory of Easter is anticipated by some rather macabre and despairing events.
Yet that is where Christian faith is located. It is located in the victory of Easter, not in the sentimentality of a “nice little popo.” That popo becomes a man and then trouble starts. He is a sign of contradiction from the beginning of his public ministry and intimidated Herod, who was intent on murdering him when he was a baby because he was a threat to his throne.
Even though of kingly line he was not born a king, in kingly robes and residence. He chose the side of peasants, the marginalised and the powerless. As a young itinerant preacher and prophet he gave the wife of Pontius Pilate nightmares and scared temple priests felt the rug of power pulled from under their feet.
His inaugural speech in the synagogue in Nazareth was subversive. He claimed to have the Lord’s Spirit, to be on the side of the poor, to look forward to the toppling of the powerful and the ascendency of the lowly. And Pilate became particularly uneasy as this peasant king entered Jerusalem victoriously, not on a horse but on a donkey.
The Bible hints he was born in the night – the shepherds were at their flocks “in the night” and the magi followed “a star.” If we want to find that infant babe today we have to look into the night, the night of TT. If Christmas doesn’t speak to the night we have lost contact with its deepest meaning.
What are some of the messages that the infant babe gurgles that the Spirit helps us translate? One salient message is that all babies are important – “All babies are icons of me,” Jesus would say. It was highly commendable, therefore, of hospital medical staff to take on the extra load in the maternity wards occasioned by many pregnant migrant women, as well as the government’s eventual capitulation to the education
