Some truths are larger than facts. Perhaps that is what draws me to the Nativity stories this time of year. Having grown up with my mother, a Sunday school teacher, and a bona fide “church lady”, I have been immersed in the stories since early childhood. Back then, the arrival of the white-skinned Christ child, heralded by the shepherds, kings, and that poor little drummer boy, seemed as magical as the arrival of Santa Claus. Of course, there is no magic. These sentimentalized narratives obscure much larger truths. One truth is that there is no “happily ever after” ending to this story. Then as in now, the only “ever after” is a summoning – a challenge to engage the present age filled as it is with strife, cruelty, and destructiveness. Then, as in now, stories about the birth of a disruptive Jewish prophet challenge us to see, speak, and live truths that confront oppressive powers and principalities. 

Much like the pharaohs and potentates of the ancient world, the would-be pharaohs of the present age proffer their vision of a world where power is used to distract, distort, divide, and destroy.  We know all the facts we need to know about their project for the USA, 2025 and beyond. In this reign, power is concentrated in the hands of oligarchs and is wielded to exclude or annihilate anyone they deem unworthy. Who are the unworthy? The unworthy is a caste that has ever-expanding and malleable boundaries. In this reign, some of the unworthy are people who come from a “sh*thole” country. To be clear, a sh*thole country is not a specific geographic location; it is a place where people have black or brown skin and whose inhabitants purportedly eat household pets.  Sometimes they wear hijabs.  The unworthy caste includes not only those who live below the imaginal poverty line, but also anyone whose accumulated wealth does not situate them among the top 10 – 1%.

Over the past weeks, I have witnessed this othering process firsthand through a series of town-wide hearings on immigration policy. To be clear, there was nothing in the proposed policy that dedicated resources to support immigrant families.  It simply codifies a legal practice: that town officials and employees cannot randomly question another person’s immigration status.  Never before have I witnessed such an uproar about legality: who should and should not be in “our hometown”. People whom I might have presumed to be otherwise functioning adults took to microphones and letter-writing campaigns to proclaim their fear of rampaging “illegals” who might invade their homes, steal their cars, and most of all, suck up their tax dollars. Some otherwise functioning adults even resorted to vandalism and threats against elected officials to “protect their freedoms”. In one screed, the speaker referenced the fact that a 9/11 attacker had eaten in a town restaurant and stiffed the waiter because he knew he wouldn’t be returning. The uber-theme of the opposition goes something like this. “We (80% white Americans) who deserve to live here (the 2024 median home price is over $900,000 and there is a 9-year wait for affordable housing) are under attack, and we are very, very afraid”!  If this plaint sounds familiar it is because rapacious power practices enshrine victimhood – of the oppressors. To be fair, their fears are actually real; however, it is not their homes, cars, or pets that are threatened.  It is their narrative of “self and we”: the notion that the human worth of the “we” caste must be predicated on the unworthiness of those “others”. This narrative is thin and carceral.  It is also a lie. 

So how do we get to potentially liberating truths? Perhaps we can start by acknowledging the astounding ironies and contradictions that give rise to such grievance and rage. A couple of striking examples from the town hall meeting: 

1. Just minutes after fervently pledging allegiance to a flag that represents “liberty and justice for all”, those same patriots used hateful and distorted rhetoric to ensure that “all” included only a privileged few.
2. Folks who angrily condemned “illegals” as criminals for being in the country implored the town council to defer to the dictates of the soon-to-be-inaugurated felon-in-chief.

Of course, nothing about this iteration of oppressive politics is new. As Nikki Giovanni wrote: 

we are no longer surprised 

that the unfaithful pray loudest 

every sunday in every church 

and sometimes in rooms facing east 

       though it is a sin and a shame

It makes me want to holler but now is not the time for any of us to throw up both our hands.  So I return to the Nativity, that story of a very young, devoutly Jewish, unwed mother and her designated partner. According to the hermeneutical accounts, their impoverished condition was such that they could not afford decent lodging. The fact that they took refuge amidst the excrement and emissions of barnyard animals belies those pastel and sanitized depictions that decorate suburban lawns. Again, to quote my beloved Nikki Giovanni, it’s just an ounce of truth, but perhaps it helps us confront the contradictions between the narratives that we cherish and those that we attempt to excise from our lives. That birthing manger was not a tranquil resort. Perhaps by confronting the contradictions we discover destabilizing truths that offer the possibility of hope and joy. After all, both the young unwed mother and her designated partner had to shed the identities that formed them – that defined who they were in the world – in order to foster a much larger narrative of hope and possibility. As the story goes, they became an immigrant family, taking refuge in another country because their lives were imperiled by a rapacious ruler – one gluttonous for power.

I am drawn to the summons of the Nativity story because it reminds me that joy can be and often is birthed through despair.  It reminds me that the truths of possibility and human connection are discovered in the cracks and ruptures of the dominant narrative. It reminds me that justice movements have always been inspired, initiated, and sustained by people who, according to the dominant narrative, didn’t have the power to do so. (After all, why would Pharaoh want a justice movement?) They are summoned by people to respond to the tidings of discomfort and joy.  The year 2025 will usher in dire consequences that will reverberate far beyond the tenure of the elected and non-elected rulers.  The facts are clear: 77 million American citizens chose to sacrifice the most vulnerable among us for the price of eggs (or so they say, but that’s another deeply rooted issue). We already know that the elected and non-elected rulers are shameless, their most devoted followers, sycophants. The MAGA-ism hustle, which includes selling bibles autographed by the demi-god himself, is a reductive sentimentality. They called it patriotic, but it is actually blasphemy. In other words, there is no low too low for them to tighten their soul-strangling grip on the consciousness of sycophants.

 The Nativity story reminds us that in the face of cruelty and oppression, we need not choose the carceral stories of sycophancy or despair. It summons us to cultivate the wisdom and courage to see beyond the illusions of identity bonding through exclusion and erasure. Instead, we are summoned to see, speak, and live the truth – maybe just an ounce at a time – they are all inextricably connected. It summons us to live the larger story, the joy that can only be accessed when we come to grips with our profound common humanity.   In closing, my joyful holiday offering: Music fills my soul, especially when dissimilar genres (George Frideric Handel and Quincy Jones) are combined to create new expressions of our aliveness.