'Jesus is born in the rubble': Palestinian Christians redefine Christmas under Israeli war

Closed shops, quiet streets and very few people walking by rapidly make an unusual Christmas-time evening in Bethlehem’s old town. The Manger Square, in front of the Nativity church, remains empty of people most of the time, and without the yearly, characteristic December Christmas tree. Even foreign pilgrims are absent.

The atmosphere in Bethlehem looks anything but like a December afternoon in the city of the Nativity, while cities around the world prepare to celebrate the Bethlehemite birth.

"The atmosphere itself among Palestinians, especially Christians, is visibly tense, especially as the end of December approaches, and the discussion becomes more frequent, in homes, on social media, and in churches: What does it mean to commemorate Christmas without celebrating?"

Although commemorated, Christmas will not be celebrated this year in Palestine. The country's tiny Christian community, the world’s oldest, has decided to have a reserved, modest commemoration of Jesus’s birth, as a reaction to the current Israeli war on Gaza. The war has so far killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, including more than 8,000 children, many of whom were newborns.

In mid-November, the council of Christian churches’ bishops in the Holy Land issued a statement, calling their faithful to avoid unnecessary celebrations and limit Christmas festivities to religious services.

The statement also encouraged priests and pastors to “concentrate on the spiritual meaning of Christmas and dedicate our thoughts to our brothers and sisters in Gaza”.

Simultaneously, the municipalities of Bethlehem and Ramallah, home to the main Christian populations in the West Bank and the centres of Christmas’ yearly celebrations, issued separate statements jointly with the cities’ churches, announcing the cancellation of all Christmas celebrations this year.

Traditionally, Christmas is a national event in Palestine. Its commemoration includes the traditional procession in Bethlehem on December 24, accompanying Jerusalem’s patriarch’s entry to the Nativity grotto.

Scout bands from across the country, including Palestinian bands from within Israel’s boundaries parade through Star Street, where according to tradition, wise men from the East followed the star to the grotto, and then through the Manger Square.

Palestinian families of all faiths assist, making it a popular celebration. This same tradition is repeated on January 6, although in a smaller size, for Christmas Eve according to the eastern ‘Julian’ calendar.

In Ramallah, the occasion takes a more secular-modern, less religious, less folkloric tone. The central piece of celebrations in the city is the lighting of the Christmas tree in the Yasser Arafat Square, accompanied by carol concerts and other artistic presentations.

The celebration is one of the city’s biggest events every year, attended by thousands. Political, civil and religious Christian and Muslim leaders take the stage in an almost ritualistic manner and offer speeches, always with a political message of national unity.

However, the exceptional aspect of this year’s Christmas is far from being limited to the absence of celebrational rituals, traditions or decorations.

The atmosphere itself among Palestinians, especially Christians, is visibly tense, especially as the end of December approaches, and the discussion becomes more frequent, in homes, on social media, and in churches: What does it mean to commemorate Christmas without celebrating? 

In a narrow street of Bethlehem, the Dar Annadwa International Centre has its doors open, in the quiet, almost empty old town.

The centre is one of the most important hubs of Christian cultural and social life in Palestine. It was in Dar Annadwa, in 2009, that several civil and religious Palestinian Christian leaders and figures announced the ‘Kairos’ document, which was at the time intended to represent a unified call by Palestinian Christians to the world, to stand for Palestinian rights.

But this evening, it is not bishops or public figures who have come to Dar Annadwa, but young people. People, all in their twenties, continue to arrive from different towns of Bethlehem, from Ramallah, Nablus and Jerusalem, to attend a talking event about a provocative question: Where is God?

Speaking at the stage is Reverend Munther Ishaq, Dar Annadwa’s director and the pastor for the Lutheran evangelical church of Bethlehem. He answers questions by the youth, written on paper strips, all concerning the war in Gaza: Why would God allow this to happen, Why doesn’t he stop it, What should we do as Christians, and particularly repeated, How can Netanyahu quote our own bible to justify our own genocide?

Reverend Munther answers in length, essentially stating the basic tenets of the Palestinian contextual theology: The bible is to be understood in its historical context, it doesn’t talk about today’s conflict. It is part of Palestine’s heritage and therefore belongs to Palestine’s Christians, as Christians, and as Palestinians. But most importantly, Reverend Munther repeats one central message:

In its context, the birth of Jesus happened under occupation and in the middle of a massacre of Bethlehem’s children; there is nothing more Palestinian than Christmas, in this year's context

Earlier in November, Reverend Munther’s church became a world celebrity, after photos of its Nativity scene went viral on social media.

Baby Jesus was placed not on a bed of straw, but in the middle of debris, echoing the images of Palestinian babies rescued after Israeli bombardment in Gaza, on October 7.

Bethlehem’s debris Nativity scene became such a hit that news channels reported it around the world. Even the US Vice-president Kamala Harris was publicly reminded that “in Bethlehem baby Jesus is in the rubble”, by a Democrat representative, while confronting her over the White House’s refusal of a ceasefire in Gaza, during a Christmas dinner speech at her house in Washington DC.

“I did not expect the Nativity scene to become such an international sensation, it wasn’t meant to,” Revered Munther tells The New Arab at the Lutheran school in Beit Sahour, a town of Bethlehem’s conglomeration and the West Bank’s largest Christian community.

“It was meant to send a message to our community and the rest of our people, here in Palestine,” explains Munther. “The message is that God suffers with the oppressed, he solidarises with the human suffering and shares it, that God this year is there, in Gaza, under the rubble and in the hospitals without electricity," he stresses.

Munther Ishaq admits that “the concerns of this Christmas are far deeper than the absence of celebrations, as the questions of the youth at the event showed”.

He takes a heavy breath and continues in a lower tone: “The biggest concern is about the entire future in this country, that the occupation state has unleashed a war against Palestinians’ existence without any opposition from the rest of the world, and that existence includes us, Palestinian Christians.

“The message is that God suffers with the oppressed, he solidarises with the human suffering and shares it, that God this year is there, in Gaza, under the rubble and in the hospitals without electricity” - Reverend Munther Ishaq, Lutheran Pastor of Bethlehem

“This is why we don’t see the cancellation of celebrations as a form of solidarity”, points out Munther. “We can’t be in solidarity with Palestine, because we are part of Palestine, part of its cause and its suffering,” he remarks.

This belonging of Palestine’s Christians to the Palestinian cause “disturbs some of the Christians in the West, especially in the US”, according to Munther, who thinks that, “Many US and European churches seem to discover the existence of Palestinian Christians every time the conflict erupts, and seem to be surprised every time to learn where we stand from it, because our existence challenges their false idea that this is a conflict between a ‘Judeo-Christian’ West, whatever that means, and Islam.”

An idea that was challenged also by Israel itself, several times since the beginning of the current war. On October 19, Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza’s Greek-Orthodox Saint Porphyrius church, in Gaza’s old city. The church, thought to be one of the oldest in the world, was housing families who had fled Israeli bombs. The strike killed 19 Palestinians.

On December 20, an Israeli army sniper killed a middle-aged Palestinian Christian woman and her mother as they moved from the Holy Family Catholic church where they took refuge, to the charity sister's convent, in the church’s compound. Gaza’s very small, native and centuries-old Christian community is facing the same fate as the rest of the Strip’s population.

In Ramallah, the centre of Palestinian politics, Christians have a more visible intervention in politics and civil society. Shortly after the beginning of the war in early October.

The local civil society mobilised to help Gazan workers whom Israel had arrested and expelled to the West Bank. Christians were at the centre of this mobilisation, hosting workers from Gaza in the city’s Christian scout’s troupe headquarters. The Greek Catholic parish, among others, became a centre for volunteers to gather aid to the workers, and sort it in individual packages.

“This was the least we could do at the time, but now, as Christmas is at hand, we can’t even gather donations for the people in Gaza, as the occupation has imposed a total blockade on the Strip,” Hind Shraydeh, a Palestinian Christian mother, journalist, activist and resident of Ramallah, tells The New Arab.

This blockade is killing innocent people in Gaza, and it is also preventing us, as Palestinian Christians from practising our faith by coming to their aid,” she stresses.

“It doesn’t seem that Christians around the world realise this situation,” she exclaims.

In early December, as Palestinian churches and cities cancelled celebrations, Israeli forces began to move south of the Gaza Strip, bombing everything in their way, following the collapse of a week-long, fragile truce.

As the scores of Palestinian victims spiked, exceeding 16,000, US President Biden turned on the lights for the Christmas tree at the White House.

“Baby Jesus is alone in the rubble of the grotto,” wrote Hind Shraydeh on her Facebook page. “Meanwhile, in a parallel and very cruel world, TV screens throw at us images of the US president lighting the Christmas tree near the White House,” her message read.

“At home, we are not putting up a Christmas tree, and I explained to my three children the reason why we didn’t make a tree this year,” explains Hind.

“I believe this is an occasion to teach children that Christmas is not about gifts and food, but it’s about feeling with the poor, the weak, the oppressed, especially when they are our people,” she explains, while placing her cup of coffee down on the table and taking a long lookout, at the main street of Ramallah, with half its shops closed and empty of any decoration.

“It might be true that the rest of the world is celebrating Christmas while in Palestine we are not,” says Hind, thoughtfully. “But in reality, while the rest of the world celebrates Christmas, we in Palestine are living it.”

Qassam Muaddi is The New Arab's correspondent in the West Bank. He is a Palestinian journalist and writer who has covered Palestinian social, political and cultural developments in Arabic, French and English since 2014

Follow him on Twitter: @QassaMMuaddi