Each year, Christmas arrives wrapped in lights, advertisements, and a relentless push to buy more. Yet this glossy version obscures the deeper truth of the holiday. Christmas is not a Western corporate capitalist bonanza. It is a Palestinian story—one grounded in history, land, and a moral message that remains urgent today.
The Christmas story begins in Bethlehem, a small town in historic Palestine. According to the Gospels, Jesus was born there to Mary in circumstances marked by vulnerability rather than comfort. This was not a romantic backdrop but a real place under Roman occupation, where ordinary people lived with political control, economic hardship, and limited power over their own lives. That reality matters, because it shaped everything that followed.
Jesus later grew up in Nazareth, a modest village in Galilee. He lived as a Palestinian Jew under empire, part of a society familiar with taxation, surveillance, and injustice. His teachings—care for the poor, solidarity with the marginalized, humility over wealth, and resistance to hypocrisy and concentrated power—emerged directly from that lived experience. The Christmas message loses its meaning when separated from this context.
Debates often arise around the land itself: Judea, Israel, Palestine. Some argue that “Palestine” was merely a name imposed by the Romans after suppressing Jewish revolts, intended to spite or erase Jewish identity. Historically, it is true that the Romans used the name Syria Palaestina, and it is also true that the land has passed through many hands—Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, various Islamic caliphates, Ottoman, and British. Names, borders, and rulers changed repeatedly over thousands of years.
What did not vanish were the people who lived there.
Across centuries, communities remained on the land, adapting to new empires, languages, and religions. Families farmed the soil, built towns, and passed down memory through generations. Gaza, in particular, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth. Many Palestinians today—especially in Gaza—can trace their ancestry back centuries in the same place. They are not recent footnotes in history, but part of a long human continuity shaped by layered pasts rather than erased by them.
Recognizing this does not deny Jewish history or connection to the land. History is not exclusive; it is cumulative. Jesus himself lived within this complexity: a Palestinian Jew whose life and teachings spoke to oppression, inequality, and the moral responsibility to stand with the vulnerable.
When Christmas is reduced to sentimentality and shopping, this radical message is softened. The angels’ proclamation of “peace on earth” was not a slogan—it was a promise tied to justice. Liberation, dignity, and compassion are not modern political intrusions into Christmas; they are at its core.
That is why Palestine belongs in our hearts and on our tongues this Christmas. Not as a trend or a talking point, but as an act of remembrance and moral clarity. To honor the birthplace of Jesus is to remember the people who still live there. To take his teachings seriously is to refuse silence in the face of suffering.
This Christmas, may we look beyond excess and return to the source. May we remember Bethlehem as a living place, not a decorative symbol. And may we hold Palestine in our hearts and on our tongues—not just for a season, but until justice and liberation are no longer prayers, but realities.
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