by
David Diggs
In most of Haiti, Christmas has yet to be commercialized.
I guess there’s not much money to be made in a country
where half the people earn less than $60 a year.
Favoring
Girls, by David Diggs
Christ’s
History, and Ours, by Gustavo Gutiérrez
Who
is Christmas for?, by David Diggs
A
Martyr's Reflections on Christmas,
words from
Oscar Romero
Is
There Room?, by David Diggs
The Cleansing
Touch, by Shelly Satran
Welcoming the
Christ Child Among Us, by David Diggs
Room for Christ,
by Dorothy Day
No Silent Night,
by David Diggs |
Some
businesses in Pétion-Ville, the wealthiest suburb
of Port-au-Prince, are giving it their best shot. In upscale
boutiques and the American-style grocery stores that have
sprouted up in recent years, windows are frosted with spray-on
snow, and Christmas lights now hang in the palm trees out
front. On the roof of one of the larger grocery stores sits
a glowing Santa in his reindeer-drawn sleigh.
Sleighs and reindeer are rare in the tropics, and most Haitians
still don’t have a clear idea who Santa is. But the
patrons of these stores are generally wealthy, cosmopolitan
Haitians who travel to the U.S. frequently. Nearly everything
available in these stores has been imported from the States.
So, it makes sense to import our commercial Christmas marketing
culture as well.
Some things get lost (or added) in the translation, though,
sometimes with amusing results. Several years ago I was
wandering through one of these grocery stores, enjoying
the cool air-conditioned air. Above the schmaltzy Christmas
music that was piped in to spread Christmas cheer, I kept
hearing a bell. Someone was clearly wandering up and down
the aisles of the store ringing a bell. I eventually turned
a corner and spotted the bell ringer.
Evidently, the store had employed a tall, thin, young man
to dress up in a Santa suit and wear a white beard. I was
astonished by the sight of this lean, Caribbean Santa, so
it took me a few seconds to figure out why he was walking
around the store ringing a bell. Then it dawned on me. The
store’s management must have seen Santa in the U.S.
collecting money for the Salvation Army. They concluded
that Santa always went about ringing a bell.
A mile or so away is another store that sells crafts made
by poor Haitian artisans. There, among the baskets and paintings,
they have a unique kind of Haitian bell for sale. Unlike
Santa’s bell or silver bells or sleigh bells, this
bell is made not of metal but of wood. It doesn’t
ring or really make much noise at all; and that is the point,
for inscribed on each bell is this Haitian proverb: “No
one hears the cry of the poor or the ringing of a wooden
bell.”
There
is great truth to this proverb, yet at Christmas we celebrate
a far greater truth, that God is not deaf to the cry of
the poor. In Christ, God not only heard the wooden bell
but became the wooden bell. Love was made flesh in the form
of a baby, born in a stable to a poor, Third World woman.
Like a wooden bell, the long-awaited Messiah was neither
heard nor understood. He led his people not into battle
with a gleaming sword lifted high but went alone to a cross
and was himself lifted high on Rome’s rough-hewn wood.
Wooden bell, Emmanuel, God is truly with us.
Two thousand years have passed since the first Christmas,
and a lot has been lost (and added) in the translation.
How do we celebrate the real Christmas amidst the jingling
and ringing and clanging and banging of the commercial Christmas?
We can start by finding ways to step away from the holiday
hubbub to give ourselves space and time to listen to God.
By meditating on scripture and the incarnation, we can hear
God reminding us that we are not alone when we are weak,
unheard, or misunderstood. This, in fact, is part of our
identity as followers of the unheard God.
Secondly,
we can open our hearts to the cry of others around us. By
listening to the unheard, we listen to Christ. By drawing
close to the poor and rejected, we draw close to Christ. We
may prefer a Christ who remains aloof, who keeps his distance
as some sort of super hero or a disembodied apparition, not
as a neighbor with too many cats or an old aunt with bed sores
in the nursing home or the troubled boy across the street.
We fear a God so willing to take on our flesh and frailty.
Such a God is more accepting of our own wounds and shame than
we are. So, we keep our guard up and busy ourselves to keep
this God at a respectable and safe distance.
But if in faith we can lay aside this fear and say to God,
as Mary did when she learned that she would bear the Christ
child, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me
according to your word.” Then we will know this wooden-bell
God to be as close and silent and vital and tender as our
own beating heart.
Wooden bell, Emmanuel, God is truly with us.
Let
us rejoice and be giddy with God’s Christmas love.
|
