Seems incongruous, doesn’t it? The Muslims wouldn’t celebrate Christ mas. Or would they? It is so much a part and parcel of Western culture that it would be totally bizarre to try and imagine Arabs sitting around Christmas trees or spending flustered weeks choosing ties and socks for obscure uncles and aunts. Or unwrapping their gifts — Kalashnikov rifles and fabulous diamond necklaces.
They on their part are a bit befuddled by Western Christianity. That’s be cause they have a rather naive idea that Christianity has some thing to do with Christ. It may be a compliment but they assume that Westerners are as serious about religion as they are about theirs. So when they see an entire society going on a binge of gluttony and present-swapping they are slightly disillusioned.
I try to explain it to them, “Look. It was this old pagan festival, Yule,” I know it’s probably too much to explain to them that ‘pagan’ is Latin for a village dweller, “And it’s all to do with living in a dark northerly climate where winter is quite a serious proposition.” I can see them wrinkling their brows trying to under stand and be sympathetic. Paganism in our view is the unwholesome, primitive, idol atrous culture before monotheistic teachings arrived (Monotheism being merely a prelude to modern scientific Agnosticism). That simplification is built into the Christian teaching but, surprisingly, not into Islam. The Muslims be lieve that every people in every age got the message, ‘monotheism’, and later degraded it into ‘idolatry’. That is why it wasn’t enough for God to send one Prophet right at the beginning of history and leave it at that. Religions devolve rather than evolve. They have to be revived and revised.
Back to my Arabs though. “Winter was so tough,” I explain to them, “And they got so tired being economical on their carefully stored food that they instituted a major binge to restock on nutrients for the last long haul into spring.” They look winningly sceptical. “And remember that food has a different function this far north. An Arab can afford to be as cetical, contenting himself with a bite now and again but here we live with a different situation. My body temperature is thirty-seven centi grade and during the winter months it often has to deal with an environ ment which is zero. So my food has to generate almost forty degrees. Particularly diffi cult in the ages before central heating.”
“What about the presents?” they challenge. “Psychological!” I aver. They re gard me with looks of mute incomprehension. “Ever seen any of those Ingmar Bergman films?” Looks of disapproving incomprehension from the more ‘proper’ of them. “These Nordics get quite depressed in the depths of winter,” somehow people whose worst climatic low points are a bit like our milder sum mer days don’t under stand the gloom that Northerners experience, “so they give each other presents.”
“But what’s it got to do with Christianity?” they ask, having got them selves hopelessly entangled with thousands of years of Northern European cul ture. “I imag ine,” say I, “that those early missionaries found this Yule festival well en trenched, saw that it made a certain amount of sense and that no-one was about to give it up for the new religion. So they merely removed the more ob jectionable el ements and tried to persuade people that it was Jesus’ birthday in stead.” “Yes, but was it his birthday?” ask my interlocutors. “No way,” I reply, “Shepherds didn’t watch their sheep by night in December in Palestine — it is a bit nippy.”
Muslims don’t celebrate Christmas because we regard it as a religious oc casion with overtones which we can’t quite accept i.e. that it is a celebration of the birth of the son of God. Sorry, that’s right out. God alone is God, no son, no three in one.
I can almost hear some of the Arabs thinking, “Still, if it’s only a matter of seeing oneself through the harsh winter, I don’t mind if I do, hmm.” A shudder of horror passes down my spine when I realise that I might have put some poor gullibles on the great, commercial roller-coaster that is Christmas. Visions pass before my eyes of their weeks of anxious shopping, borrowings from the banks or the execrable money-lenders, a few days of over-eat ing and forced hilarity and then more weeks of counting the cost. They are rising to leave, satisfied with my explanations. “I lied,” I lie, “It really is the celebra tion of the birth of the son of God. That is what the eating and drinking are all about.” The Arabs eye me coldly not really knowing what to believe anymore. But I can see that they think it will be much easier if they keep well away from this mixed-up Western culture.
“Happy Chrisbus,” I call after them, as they go out the door, marrying the season of nasal congestion with the season of good cheer, “And a Very New Year.”
(The Irish Times, Thursday, December 29, 1988)