Christian, If You're Celebrating Deportations, You Shouldn't Be Celebrating Christmas

Christian,

Maybe you can help me here.

I'm trying to reconcile two things I’ve seen.

On one hand, I’ve seen your house: carefully strewn with glowing lights, fragrant boughs of holly decking your photo-covered hallways.
I’ve seen your ceiling-scraping tree, limbs weighed down with the carefully-curated collection of fragile keepsakes and handcrafted mementos acquired over decades.
I’ve seen your overflowing shopping cart, packed to bursting with goodness that you plan to soon indulge in, nestled in an abundance that cascades in every direction.
I’ve seen the outward displays of passionate religion in needlepoints you make and in cards you've sent me and in filtered Instagram posts that arrive from you on my timeline every day.

But I've also seen something else.

I've also seen your social media feed.
I've read your anti-immigrant rants.
I've seen the incendiary articles you share.
I've witnessed you tossing-off cruel comments at the dinner table.
I've seen your cruelty, your selfishness, your anger toward human beings not born here.
I've heard you declare your contempt for those trying to find refuge in your midst.
I know who you voted for and why.

And I know that soon, you will be singing songs declaring your heart for the birth of Jesus and celebrating the arrival of Christmas.

With all due respect, you probably shouldn’t be.

If you’re celebrating mass deportations of distraught, exhausted human beings seeking refuge, you probably shouldn't be sweetly singing about a baby with "no crib for a bed."

If you have such easy disregard for millions of strangers who you seek to eradicate from your neighborhood, I'm not sure "let every heart, prepare him room," should burst forth from your lips.

If you're unaffected by the coming trauma to already assailed families who didn’t arrive nestled in the privilege you were born into, I'm thinking that basking in candlelight while singing words about reverently gathering "'round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild," is all a bit hypocritical.

What I'm saying, Christian, is that if you aren't capable of manufacturing the slightest bit of compassion for the hurting and the hungry and the terrified and the desperate right now—what on earth are you singing for? Just what exactly are you celebrating?

What is the point of this holiday for you, if you can't make room in your own heart and your own community, and your own nation—for the least of these when they actually show up looking for the love that you claim God is made of?

If you can't or won't welcome refugees and migrants and screaming brown-skinned babies of families in duress—you really have no business celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Those songs are about a foreign child.
They are about a non-American human being.
They are about a weary family, looking for rest.
They are about divinity wrapped in dark pigmentation.
They are about peace for the world coming in the least likely form, and the welcome that was difficult to find.
They are about the transformation of hearts that expanded to receive more than they had before.

Maybe you need to give a gift to yourself right now.

Maybe you should pause before delivering another sugar-coated carol, another pristine hymn, another effusive song of praise to a single child born in poverty two thousand years ago—and you should ask yourself if you can really own these words, given your posture toward so many children who are here right now needing gentleness.

Maybe if you think about the actual verses you're singing and the object of those songs, you'll hear the discord as you place them alongside your politics and your posturing and your social media rantings about “illegals” and your affirmation of a president who dehumanized those the Bible called the alien among you, who you are to receive as your own.

If you can see yourself with objectivity, you might notice the dissonance in your celebrations, as you recognize that Jesus would go on to say that the way you welcome or ignore the poor and the hungry and the forgotten—is the way that you will welcome or ignore him.

And as you do this, I pray a new compassion and mercy and generosity are birthed in you this season.
I pray empathy for those seeking refuge arrives unexpectedly in your spirit.
I pray you find yourself surprised by something beautiful being born within you.
I pray your heart is broken and altered by the need around you and moves you to alleviate that need instead of increasing increasing it.

And maybe, just maybe you will find yourself seeing the very eyes of Jesus in those you would demonize and round up and joyfully send away—and you’ll become a place of welcome and rest and safety instead.

Then, you'll really have reason to sing and celebrate this Christmas.