A genuine Christmas spirit has rarely been as high as this year. Probably many readers think exactly the opposite.
Most people in fact are saying that the current political and constitutional crisis is the Grinch that stole Christmas. Wherever you go, you feel that there is no Christmas spirit, they say. Business is down, people are not buying as much as they used to, some parties have been cancelled and people discuss the crisis and the evidence that is given in court more than they talk about Christmas.
Moreover, the same people say that we have never had a Christmas as tepid as this thanks to the corrupt gang – to use the President’s words – that brought our country into disrepute.
Christmas 1981: a massive crisis
This is not the first time that we celebrated Christmas in the midst of a massive political crisis. I remember the Christmas of 1981 and the crisis that followed the perverse result due to the gerrymandering of the electoral districts. The result of that election dragged the country into a crisis for many years and had disgraced our country internationally. Tension was high, people’s anger exacerbated with tensions reaching boiling point and with business at a very low point. An element present then and missing now: a lot of physical violence abetted by the regime’s police.
Can one say, however, that then and now there was no Christmas spirit?
What is the Christmas spirit?
It all depends on one’s definition. If by Christmas spirit one understands mainly the festive celebrations, the parties, the music in the streets, the decorations and the fun and the merrymaking, one would be correct in saying that this year – as in 1981 – Christmas spirit is on a low ebb, though it will somehow pick up by Wednesday.
But while happily conceding that this is the case, there is, I believe, a solid argument to be made that many a time these activities can be a form of alienation, understood in the Marxist sense, more than a manifestation of a true Christmas spirit.
In his Angelus address on December 11, 2005, Pope Benedict said that in today’s consumer society, Christmas has unfortunately suffered a sort of commercial “pollution” that risks changing its authentic spirit.
This is why, for believers, the Christmas spirit is made of sterner stuff than parties, drinks, celebrations, merrymaking and all that jazz.
The Bible readings on Christmas and Christmas Eve help our search for the true Christmas spirit.
Those imbued with the true spirit of Christmas should shun the cheap parody of unity lauded by some. They should strive on for truth and justice
The Halleluiah verse of the Christmas Vigil Mass says that “tomorrow the wickedness of the earth will be destroyed” while the first reading of the Midnight Mass and the Psalm of that Mass and the Mass at dawn speak of justice. The second reading mentions the deliverance from lawlessness.
Then there are the Nativity readings. One finds no festive celebrations, street lights, decorations or parties.
Unfortunately, the treacle image of Christmas projected by the consumer neo-capitalist society distracts people from the fact that the first Christmas, like this year’s Christmas in Malta, also happened in a politically charged atmosphere.
The story of Mary and Joseph is underpinned by the politics of a Palestine occupied by Rome. They went to Bethlehem because of a census aimed to regularise taxation records. Mary and Joseph soon became asylum seekers in Egypt escaping from the despotic political power of King Herod.
Stephen Holmes in his booklet on The Politics of Christmas (2011) rightly writes that the nativity story is also a “powerful human drama of how the lives of ordinary people can be disturbed and destroyed by political systems and decisions, and how God cares and intervened in these affairs”.
The social and political dimensions of the birth of Christ and His message cannot be put aside. Our celebration of Christmas should therefore involve these social and political dimensions.
Christmas screams for our active involvement in the way politics is managed. It is the affirmation that truth not deceitfulness make us free; justice not corruption made us better humans; solidarity not egoism is the way forward. There should be no other Christmas.
Christmas, truth and justice
We have rarely had a Christmas season during which the cries for truth and justice have resonated in our streets as much as this year.
The demonstrations and protests, striving for the enacting in our society of the deeply rooted desire of all men and women of goodwill for truth and justice, are an authentic manifestation of what the Christmas spirit is all about.
It is a pity that a very tiny minority on a few occasions resorted to tactics – e.g. egg throwing – desecrating and undermining the efforts of the vast majority of participants who were ready to suffer constant threats, on cyberspace as well as on our public streets, and personal sacrifices for the pursuance of their legitimate cause to build our country on truth and justice.
Pope Benedict said that “the capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reigns supreme”.
There is one very stark truth. This crisis is the result of a group – not one – of corrupt politicians in cahoots with corrupt businessmen organising themselves to take over and rob the state. Then they had to pay criminals to help them stay in power.
It is also true that many preferred to turn a blind eye so as not to see what was crystal clear. They preferred to keep their pappa and their power. Some of them now recognised that to keep on enjoying their pappa and power they have to conveniently shed crocodile tears and conveniently cry mea culpa. They are now acting as if they are men from Mars who have just landed in Malta instead of accepting the crude truth that they were complicit, at the very least, by default.
The truth is that our institutions have betrayed us. They were hardly interested in truth and did not care for justice – except when they were forced by circumstances (particularly the presence of foreign policemen, as well as leaks in the media) to act.
The tortuous road for truth and justice is undermined by the inane appeals for a facile unity. As our bishops rightly said: truth and justice are the only way that lead to real unity. President George Vella also made that statement loud and clear.
Those imbued with the true spirit of Christmas should shun the cheap parody of unity lauded by some. They should strive on for truth and justice, whatever the cost, and whatever it takes.
Only they who act in this manner can really benefit from the angels’ promise that peace is there only for men and women of goodwill.