A well-known cycle of celebrations occurs in the Christian world every December: carols, lights, decorated trees, consumer fervor, and the warm imagery of a snowy night. Public discourse frequently mentions “Western Christian values” or even the flimsy idea of “Judeo-Christian civilisation” in the United States and Europe. Many people now believe, almost automatically, that Christianity is a Western religion, an expression of European culture, history, and identity because of these expressions.
It doesn’t.
West Asian and Middle Eastern religions have always been associated with Christianity. This land is where its geography, culture, worldview, and founding stories originate: among peoples, cultures, and social structures that resemble those found in today’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan more than anything else imagined in Europe. The term “Judeo-Christian values,” which even includes Judaism, is a distinctly Middle Eastern phenomenon. Christianity was not given birth to it by the West, which is undoubtedly true.
Nothing more clearly demonstrates the disconnect between Christianity’s roots and its contemporary Western expression than Christmas, a Palestinian Jew’s birth story from a landlie who was born long before modern boundaries and identities first emerged.
What Christmas was made in the West
Christmas is a cultural marketplace in the West. It is romanticized, layered, and commercialized. Giving presents to the poor is more important than giving them. A holiday stripped of its theological and moral foundation has evolved into a performance of abundance, nostalgia, and consumerism.
The Christmas song Silent Night’s famous lines reveal the story’s true origin: Jesus was not a child of upheaval but rather of serenity.
He was born in a region plagued by military occupation, to a family that had been forced by an imperial decree. According to the Gospel account, a fearful tyrant who wanted to preserve his rule forced the holy family to flee as refugees. Sound quaint to you?
In fact, Christmas is a story of empire, injustice, and vulnerability for people who are just like them.
Bethlehem: Reality versus Imagination
Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is viewed as an imaginable postcard from antiquity that has been lost in time for many in the West. Instead of being a living, breathing city with real people and a distinct history and culture, the “little town” is portrayed as a quaint village in scripture.
Today, Bethlehem is surrounded by checkpoints and walls constructed by occupiers. Its residents are subserved by an apartheid and fragmented society. Many people experience isolation from both Jerusalem and the occupier’s refusal to allow them to travel there.
This sentiment also explains why so many people in the West are so uninterested in Bethlehem’s Christians during Christmas. Even worse, many people adopt ideologies and political beliefs that completely erase or deny our presence in order to support Israel, the world’s largest empire, today.
In these contexts, modern Bethlehem, with its Palestinian Christians suffering and surviving, is an unpalatable reality that needs to be ignored.
This disconnect is significant. Western Christians lose sight of their spiritual roots when they forget Bethlehem is real. And when they forget the Christmas story, they also forget that Bethlehem is real.
They forget that it took place among people who were under an empire, in trouble, who longed for justice, and who believed in God’s presence rather than a distant one.
What Bethlehem’s Christmas significance is
What does Christmas look like when it is told from the perspective of the Palestinian Christians who still reside there today? What significance does it have for a tiny town that has practiced religion for two millennia?
Christmas is a story of God’s solidarity at its core.
It is the story of a God who is present among the people and takes the side of those who are marginalized. The idea that God incarnated on human flesh is not a metaphysical abstraction. It makes a radical statement about where God chooses to reside: among those who are vulnerable, in poverty, among those who are occupied, among those who have no other source of power but hope.
In the Bethlehem story, God doesn’t identify with the oppressed, but with the victims of the empire. God is an infant, not a warrior, when He comes. God is incarnated in a manger rather than a palace. The most striking example of divine solidarity is when God joins humanity’s most vulnerable parts.
Thus, Christmas is the declaration of a God who challenges empire-based logic.
This is lived experience for Palestinians today, not just theology. We are aware of our own world when we read the Christmas story: the census, which imposed restrictions on Mary and Joseph’s travels resembles the permits, checkpoints, and bureaucratic controls that today entail. The displaced people who have fled wars across our region resonate with the flight of the holy family. The violence we encounter around us echoes Rode’s.
The Palestinian story of Christmas is unparalleled.
A global perspective
After two years of holding private holidays, Bethlehem now observes Christmas. We had no other choice but to cancel our celebrations, which was painful but necessary.
We couldn’t possibly assume otherwise as people who still reside in the holiday country were witnessing a genocide in Gaza. When children his age were being slain from the rubble, we couldn’t celebrate Jesus’ birth.
Celebrating this season does not imply that apartheid’s structures, genocide, or war have ended. As of right now, there are still fatalities. We are still under siege.
Instead, our celebration is a sign of resilience, a declaration that Bethlehem is still home to Christmas and that the story told here must continue.
It is crucial to return to the story’s foundation at a time when Western political discourse increasingly uses Christianity as a marker of cultural identity, frequently excluding the very people who were the birth of Christianity.
Our message to the world church this Christmas is to remember where the story began, especially Western Christians. to keep in mind that Bethlehem is still a place of worship rather than a myth. The Christian world must turn its attention to Bethlehem, a town whose citizens still clamor for justice, dignity, and peace, if it is to honor the meaning of Christmas.
Remembering Bethlehem means remembering that God supports the oppressed and that Jesus’ followers are also called to do the same.
