Every day is not Christmas, but tomorrow is: The changing faces of Christmas and Christianity
Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-1980)
Rajan Philips-December 23, 2017, 7:18 pm
Will there be Christmas even if there are fewer and fewer Christians in future years? ‘Christmas without Christians’ is a growing topic of discussion in ‘western Christian’ countries especially at Christmas time. While the connection between Christmas and Christians is never going to be broken, no matter how tenuous it may seem from time to time, the celebration of Christmas as a secular holiday by non-Christians is manifestly gaining currency. There are two separate sets of forces that are at work. What are behind the growing universal popularity of Christmas as a holiday are quite different from what are driving down the numbers of Christians especially in western countries.
Its location at the end of the calendar year gives Christmas a major fillip over all other feasts and holidays, religious or otherwise. It is now part of the working culture for working people, generally in all countries, to look for the year-end break from their treadmills of labour. Global commercialization has made sure that anyone and everyone could celebrate Christmas no matter where one lives, what language one speaks, or what one’s religion is. As the religion of colonial capitalism, Christianity received a global boost like no other religion, and Christmas certainly benefits from that far flung reach even if the number of faithful Christians in the old imperial-colonial heartland is steadily declining.
As for the actual numbers of practising Christians, there is a neat divide between western and non-western countries. The declining numbers of Christians in western countries stand in sharp contrast to the swelling numbers of them in non-western societies, especially in Africa and Latin America. Interestingly, in Latin American countries the numbers of Protest Christians especially belonging to the younger denominations have been increasing at the expense of the traditionally Catholic populations. In the West, Christianity loses its followers mostly to secularism and non-believers. Increasingly, census returns are showing more and more people declaring themselves either as outright atheists, or agnostics without religious affiliations. Add to these the growing non-Christian immigrants and the proportions of Christians in western countries are trending down.
Christmas became the weathervane for these demographic changes and the winds of political correctness. The age old greeting "Merry Christmas" gave way to the politically correct "Happy Holidays." There was polite backlash when "Christmas Tree" was targeted for name change as the "Tree of Lights." I don’t think the name change between trees went far. And in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump turned the ‘Merry Christmas’ issue into a campaign slogan. He promised to restore ‘Merry Christmas’ to its former status, and has kept his promise. But not many have switched back from ‘Happy Holidays’ to ‘Merry Christmas.’
And practically all Christians and of course Muslims have rebuked the US President for recognizing all of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, breaking with the time-honoured position of every other country, save Israel, that Jerusalem shall be the shared capital of Israel and a future Palestinian state. More merrily, the Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem have refused to meet with US Vice President Mike Pence who was planning to visit Bethlehem before Christmas. This is Santa Claus comeuppance for the evangelical Vice President who has no background in international affairs, but managed to persuade or provoke his boss to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This week at the UN, more than a two-thirds of member countries including all four co-members of the permanent Security Council (Britain, China, France and Russia) delivered a stinging pre-Christmas rebuke to the Trump Administration over its Jerusalem position.
Saint Oscar Romero
In 2018, there will be another major Christian rebuke to Trump from Latin America with the expected canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who was gunned down at the altar, on 24 March 1980, while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence. The canonization will be in Rome, but his beatification in 2015 by Pope Francis in San Salvador drew 250,000 people and one thousand priests from all over Latin America. The same number of people had attended his funeral in 1980 as mourners from all over the world. Pope John Paul II sent Cardinal Ernesto Ahumada as his special emissary to eulogise at the funeral. The funeral was described as the biggest demonstration not only in El Salvador but also in all of Latin America. It was a demonstration of what Archbishop Romero stood for and paid for with his blood: "brotherhood, love and peace." The same message that Christmas celebrates spiritually and secularly.
The Vatican is expected to make a major political statement with the canonization of Oscar Romero. Apart from marking the growing shift of the centre of gravity of Christianity from the global North to global South, Romero’s canonisation will also mark Vatican’s official recognition of what Liberation Theology stood for without formally endorsing the doctrine itself. After nearly a thousand years of triumphalism, the Church under Pope Francis is officially taking the side of, to quote Bruce Clark in the Economist, "the oppressed against the oppressor, the colonised against the coloniser, and the developing world against the already-rich world."
Oscar Romero’s episcopate was initially known not for radical but conservative theology. Nonetheless, his deep identification with social justice and his revulsion of violence made him the most prominent, if not reluctant, exponent of liberation theology. It also made him the target of Christian right-wing extremists who did not want to let go of the power and pelf of the triumphalist Church. They killed him on the altar of Christ in the name pre-Vatican II orthodoxy. But Archbishop Romero and his message have stood the test time against the intolerance of his violent detractors. The Church now considers him a martyr, in the tradition of the early Church fathers who were put to death in defence of their faith by kings and emperors. As Saint Romero, he will be a venerated figure not only in Latin America but everywhere among the Catholic faithful.
Archbishop Romero and his canonization have a special meaning for those Sri Lankans who were associated with the spiritual and the secular missions of Bishop Leo Nanayakkara, Bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe and Fathers Tissa Balasuriya and Paul Caspersz in the tumultuous times of the 1970s and 1980s.They were bold ecumenists and even bolder apostles for human freedom, dignity and minority rights. They stood for non-violence against the violence of not only the oppressor but also the oppressed. They were the Sri Lankan counterparts of Archbishop Romero and hundreds of Latin American priest leaders who fought for social justice and human rights against dictators who were also Catholics. The canonizing of Romero is also the honouring of Bishops Leo and Lakshman, and Fathers Tissa and Paul. And that is a sublime message for tomorrow.
