Christmas in the Holy Land
A Montanan on a Mission, Volume 4
A Not-so-nice Christmas Present
For the Christian community here in the Holy Land, the Christmas season begins as early as November. Lights begin to go up on the old stone streets, and the bustle of holiday markets and the tit-tatter of the Orthodox Scout Troops' drums practicing for the parade echo throughout the evenings. In early December, the ceremonial lighting of the Christmas trees marks the official start to the season, and the gaiety is palpable.
Except this year was different. On December 6, President Trump announced that the United States would formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The legal ramifications of this move were quite vague, but the symbolic gesture dashed the dwindling hope of the Palestinians for their own independent state. East Jerusalem is the spiritual and cultural center of Palestine. Without going into too much detail, it is easy to see why the US decision feels like a mortal blow to Palestinians. (For those who want more detail, I've linked to a very well-written essay below.)
In Arab culture, people don't celebrate during periods of mourning, and so the Christmas celebrations here were decidedly muted. As an American, I found it difficult to explain to our Palestinian partners the intent of such a decision, let alone its meaning. And yet, through it all I saw the resilience of the Palestinian people. As I sat in church on Christmas eve, and heard the pastor speak about the long history of this region and the many empires that have come and gone, I felt that the Christmas message of rebirth and hope had taken on heightened importance in these dark times. Indeed, if we return to the time of Jesus' birth, it wasn't exactly a joyous time in Roman Palestine. Occupied by the Romans, the Jewish people lived under an oppressive imperial system that impoverished the average peasant to the point of near subsistence. It seems to me that celebrating the birth of Christ should be a joyous, yet solemn occasion.
International Christmas Breakfast
Christmas Eve in Manger Square
Top Chef
Winter Blues
In some ways, this mixture of feelings captures my past several months serving here.
I want to address a topic that I think is rarely discussed by me and others openly for a variety of reasons, some of them cultural and some of them personal. Though I’m having the adventure of a lifetime, living abroad can also be stressful. I’m not writing this for pity, but because I think it’s important to be honest that with every grand adventure comes grand challenges. I've struggled with some of my demons. My computer broke shortly after the New Years, with my unpublished but nearly complete blog post on it. Since October I’ve been struggling with allergies. In December, my allergies shifted into debilitating sinus headaches. Some days, it felt like a battle to step outside of the house and buy some khobz (bread), despite my relative grasp of Arabic. Arabic itself, with its diglossia and strange sounds, and inchoate grammar, often vexes me as well. Many people have told me that the Arabic language is an ocean; I usually respond by telling them that I merely swim on its surface, but oftentimes I feel like I’m drowning.
I've also struggled with my identity as a foreigner here. Traveling and living abroad, especially with the advent of social media, can easily become another status symbol -- another way to gain followers on Instagram and make a cool Snapchat story. And this time spent maintaining our public persona often pulls us away from the reflection is such a valuable part of living outside of one’s own culture and being immersed in another. Travel can also inspire a sort of pressure to prove you’re having the time of your life. Many people will never get the chance to travel as much as I have, and sometimes this thought makes it difficult to acknowledge that it is OK to be unhappy or challenged when I'm traveling. There is also this pesky American obsession with self-reliance and independence; another word for it is stubbornness. The more I live here, the more I realize how much of an illusion complete self-reliance is. And yet, a deep part of me still feels that asking for help means I am showing weakness. It often takes me a while to work up the nerve to ask for relatively simple things.
On Feeling Small
I find the rolling hills and dusty deserts of this land enchanting, but I also miss the wide-open spaces of Montana. So, when we went down to Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev Desert and gazed out over miles of desert, I felt my soul take a deep breath. Though the Ramon Crater is a makhtesh, or natural erosion cirque, it feels like you are looking at an alien landscape. Afterwards, we ventured up to Haifa where we got thoroughly soaked by a rainstorm. Fortunately, the museum we saw was indoors. The Ghetto Fighters House tells the story of Jewish resistance during WWII. The Jews who resisted in the Warsaw Ghetto were incredibly brave. Despite the certainty of defeat, they decided it would be better to go down fighting. I have a lot of respect for this.