Christmas is About Peripheries

Christmas is about peripheries! For Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary, ‘there was no place for them in an inn’. They are migrants in a town which is unwelcoming to the ‘outsider’; they are forced to go to the ‘periphery’ and make a stable their ‘home’; there Mary gives birth to Jesus. The stable becomes symbolic of the periphery, complete with stink and squalor, straw and swaddling clothes. In this reality, God pitches his tent among us.

The shepherds lived on the peripheries; unlettered, poor folk, tending sheep. Their life was difficult: long nights spent in the open and biting cold. Their sheep were precious: each one had a name and they smelled of their sheep. When one was lost, they went in search of the lost one, until found and then they rejoiced. When they were given the “good news” of the birth of the Saviour, they leave their sheep behind (personal attachments) and run in haste to worship him. They lived on the peripheries, but were chosen to be the first witnesses with the herald of the angels.

The Magi were also people who lived on the peripheries: physically in a distant land. They possessed wisdom and wealth. They had a singular mission in life: the search for the truth and for the Messiah that would epitomise that truth. They go out of their way to find Him and give Him of their best. The Magi find solace and spiritual fulfilment when they encounter the Saviour. They also realise that having found the truth they have to take a stand for justice. They go back home by ‘another way’ thwarting the evil designs of a ruthless, jealous, power-crazy King. There are repercussions with the killing of innocent children; however, the Holy Family flees to Egypt, where as refugees, they find safety and security in the periphery of a foreign land.

The shepherds represent those whom Jesus identified with, in his public ministry: the excluded and the exploited, the marginalised and the minorities, the poor and the hungry. The Magi, on the other hand, are those whom he referred to and even embraced in the ushering of a society based on justice and inclusiveness: the Good Samaritan, the prodigal son, the poor man and the gentiles, Mary Magdalene and Simon of Cyrene; these were the ‘outsiders’ and not the proverbial ‘chosen ones.’

Jesus came for those on the peripheries; he took sides with them and visibly fought for them. We see this unfold so poignantly in the stories of the woman caught in adultery and that of the healing of the ten lepers. From the time he proclaims his mission on earth in the synagogue at Nazareth, right up to the parable of the Last Judgement – Jesus makes it evidently clear that true discipleship is essentially responding to the people on the peripheries and in enriching their lives.

Sadly Christmas today has been relegated to crass commercialisation, to dancing and merriment, to overeating and splurging, to a vulgar display of opulence and wanton waste. It is no longer about the birth of Jesus, born on the periphery and for those on the periphery. Powerful, vested interests, have manipulatively taken out Jesus, the spirit and values which his birth brings.

In his Apostolic Exhortation ‘Dilexi Te’, Pope Leo gives us a direction, “by her very nature the Church is in solidarity with the poor, the excluded, the marginalized and all those considered the outcast of society.” Are we listening? Do we have the courage to put Christ back into Christmas?