When my dog was still around, she used to love to kidnap the baby Jesus from under our tree each year. Before her the same stuffed manager scene had survived three boys. No one got hurt, baby Jesus was returned, somewhat slobbery, but washable and it was all pretty predictable and funny. If only the world outside my living room was as light hearted and easily washable.
This Advent season, I’m reminded that Christmas in America can be far from the story of an actual family journeying to be taxed by an occupied empire. It’s nice to see our kids open presents, but the original story wasn’t a celebration and was shortly followed by a family fleeing their own land to escape deadly political persecution. In fact, after the escape from their own land, the family in the manger scene would spend some years in exile.
The United Nations defines a refugee as a person who is without a nationality, stateless, or has been denied the right of return having been forced to leave. The Holy Family fits at least two of these in their flight to Egypt. Mary, nearly deified by Catholics and largely ignored by Protestants, is not portrayed by the Biblical text as a zen woman or sweet teenager. Her prayer, recorded in scripture rejoices at the rich being sent away hungry and the powerful being brought down. Her words have the defiant tone of a young woman raised in an occupied territory.
The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates 108 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide. So the ancient story of the family depicted in the manger scene hasn’t gone away. And what of the other characters in the story depicted in children’s books and cantatas?
King Herod, was a sell out puppet, appointed by the Romans. The Jewish historian Josephus seems to not only question Herod’s character, but even his full Jewishness. The temple Herod built was larger than its Solomonic predecessor, a showy model built to win over his people like a step father’s gifts to a reluctant child. Religious sell outs tend toward the theme park gesture over actual care for those under their authority, jealous of anyone who might steal their spotlight. Those who use religious language to win political favor are not new and their methods draw attention to a world they create which uses the language of religion with no real application of justice, love or mercy.
The Magi (Wise Men) who the text has arriving later but show up in manger scenes, were on a sincere pilgrimage but clearly didn’t know the landscape, nearly tipping off those who used power in a way that would harm the most defenseless. And that is perhaps where our worlds intersect. We live in a world where border lands exist and occupied territories and refugees are flesh and blood not just characters in a story.
Perhaps in a country as large and wealthy as ours it is easier to ignore borders and the crisis of migration. However, much of the world can’t do that much ignoring and our own hemisphere is a mix of corrupt leaders, people escaping oppression and the vulnerable fleeing persecution. Not thousands of years ago or in a Christmas special far far away, justice and mercy are not clean, neat or washable. Well meaning Americans often refer to our border as a place of invasion. Perhaps doing so without knowing our own complicity with the suffering of others. Not knowing that President Clinton’s crime bill not only spiked incarceration of Americans, but weaponized our immigration system and laid the foundations for separating families. The same crime bill also mass deported criminals from our prison systems to El Salvador, a country where the U.S. backed the right leaning government in a 12 year civil war. Into the power vacuum arrived those who would become MS-13.
Joseph and Mary had to travel to the land of Joseph’s birth because Roman occupation had separated them from the area of his ancestral origins and they were to be taxed. They were not religious tourists, and there was no choice.
Depending on your source it’s estimated that between 1.5 and 2 million Americans go on short term missions trips. Somewhere between 65 and 70 percent are trips to another country. These trips can be costly and often are, despite serious needs in the countries visited, mostly a way for U.S. students and church goers to see poverty first hand. They may paint some walls and play games with children, but they will come back to air conditioned houses, two or more cars and a fridge full of food. They may even speak of being moved by the poverty they saw while voting for politicians who use aggressive and demeaning language about the very nationalities or ethnicities the mission trippers interacted with.
Our manager scenes sit quietly and serenely under our trees, waiting to be packed up for another year. The story of the manger, the occupied territories, the poor and displaced don’t go away and our response to those under empires and within them tells more about Christmas than the warm fire and stockings hung with care.
John Cabascango
John Cabascango is the author of Off the Rails: Evangelicals,Power and Politics, and a 2023 NEH Borderlands Narratives Scholarship Recipient at University of Texas El Paso
This article seems to have the slight stench of softly supporting open borders, and maligns the story of Mary and Joseph fleeing ACTUAL persecution, rather than the contemporary story of wanting a job that pays American dollars or to have the American government give them things. I dont recall an Egyptian welfare system paying for Mary a new house on the backs of Egptyian tax payers also trying to make ends meet under rampant inflation of the denarius. I’m all ears to hear of current central American dictators slaughtering the first born, especially, in sheer irony, from people who support the slaughter of the unborn. By all means, Comment Section, enlighten me.
Merry Christmas to those who are faithful stewards of God Grace, do not burden their neighbors, and don’t covet their neighbors’ possessions.