I love twinkling lights and presents under the tree and hot cocoa as much as anyone, but if you really want to see my jolly side, check in at Easter. To me, the Christmas story is one of hardship and adversity and resilience in the face of cruel and capricious power and it breaks my heart every time.
Let’s recap:
The great god Caesar Augustus needs cash for his forever wars. Plunder isn’t cutting it so he comes up with the brilliant idea to tax every single human under his dominion. But rather than send out census takers to count heads, he decides no, let’s see if I can make this boondoggle as inefficient and painful as possible. Let’s make everyone shut down their businesses, upend their lives and undertake an arduous and pointless journey to their hometown and then present them with a bill for their trouble.
Eight and a half months pregnant? Too bad. Pack a sandwich.
Giving birth is hard enough without also having to satisfy cavalier and cruel edicts from powerful men who have never and will never push a small human out of their bodies.
It’s as true now as it was 2000 years ago.
Pregnancy has always contained a level of risk but now it appears that something as arbitrary and artificial as the latitude and longitude of your mailing address can make it almost fatal. Which side of a river you live on can make death by pregnancy a real possibility. I learned this first hand this year, as my own daughter faced down the terror of having a complicated pregnancy in a State that has outlawed any procedure that could even remotely be labeled an abortion.
And if you don’t have a home, or you’re fleeing from violence or you suddenly have to travel hundreds of miles on foot to placate the whims of a ruler bent on squeezing more taxes out of poor people your prospects get even worse.
There are and always will be men in power who denigrate entire swaths of humanity as coming from shithole countries. (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth? John 1:46”) Same as it ever was. Year after year after year, Christmas reminds us of this.
But maybe, just maybe, this Christmas, as we groan under the weight of fickle decrees spewing forth from our shiny new Caesars, we will finally see borders as not only imaginary but cruel. And if we see a mother fleeing with their newborn into a foreign country, perhaps we’ll put down our guns, call off our dogs, and welcome, if not a savior, then at the very least someone worth saving.
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Hey, glad to see you made it to the postscript.
Pope Francis recently made some recommendations regarding sermons and homilies: one idea, one sentiment, and one invitation to action.
If you are so moved, the organization “No Mas Muertes” does incredible, literally life saving work along the US/Mexico border. Please consider donating.