Christmas 2020 will certainly go down in history as one distinctly different from past ones. Constrained by the numbing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the festivities this year have been subdued in scale and style worldwide.
Churches that would normally resound with choirs and carols have been empty. Fewer Christmas trees have been sold, fewer cakes eaten and fewer gifts exchanged. The malls have not witnessed the usual bonanza that cheers businesses and consumers alike.
Even as the vaccine appeared to offer a much-awaited redemption, the emergence of the new mutant in the UK has dampened the celebratory spirit further. Partial lockdowns, travel bans and renewed caution are now being revived to mitigate the ongoing risks of the pandemic, through the Christmas week. But as we bemoan the absence of the usual extravagance, there may be a deeper meaning to this unusual Christmas experience, which is worth a reflection.
Christmas is celebrated every year with the gaiety marked by the traditional symbols of Christmas – the tree, the Santa, the mistletoe, the cakes etc. But the Christmas story as it unfolded 2000 years ago was devoid of all these. It was a very ordinary, down-to-earth experience of a couple having their first baby in the most difficult of circumstances. The melodrama has been lost in the evolution of this story over the centuries. It is the story of God choosing to send His son in human form to engage with a world that needed a way of salvation.
This is the story of two ordinary citizens, Joseph and Mary, trudging on a donkey to file their citizenship credentials. Mary is at term, possibly in early labour, desperately seeking a flat surface to lie down to relieve the aching back. Joseph is an anxious, inexperienced husband running from pillar to post, knocking on the doors of many motels, with not a decent one for his wife in pain.
One compassionate inn-keeper agrees to organize an outhouse meant for domestic animals into a makeshift room. And then the birth, undescribed and unattended, but imaginable. There is no mid-wife, no anesthetic, no sterile gowns, not even a proper bedsheet to lie on. We read that the baby was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger. With no relatives around, there was no after-care and no pitcher of cool water to sip and sleep.
That is how Jesus was born. For Mary and Joseph, it may not have been exciting as they went through this experience. Even when the shepherds and the wise men came, Mary may have been hoping for a well deserved sleep. And then there was the threat of Herod wanting to kill the baby, which forced the young family to seek asylum in another country.
Our collective experiences in and through the pandemic resonate with the first Christmas saga. The journey of Joseph and Mary and the birth of Jesus were full of constraints, with real-life parallels today. This was also the experience of thousands of migrants who were walking home - tired, dehydrated, limping, falling, dying of thirst, not so long ago.
Some may have knocked on the doors of highway motels just to find there was "no room in the inn' or it was too expensive. The inn-keeper becomes our metaphor of the needed compassion for us to say, "Yes, there is room". The world today can do well if, even in this COVID season, we learn to say there is room for you in my home, my workplace, my head and my heart. Come in, please!
This year, all of us have a unique opportunity to reflect on and relive the original Christmas and apply its learning to a world that is craving for love and acceptance. It is only then that this festival of love, joy and peace will indeed be so.
(The author is the former Director, CMC Vellore, and Medical Director, ITC Healthcare Project, New Delhi)