Christian Christmas and universal Christmas

I am referring not only to the Christian Christmas, but also to the universal Christmas, that of the sun at the solstices of each year and in the miracle of dawn every day, the Christmas of the azaleas in bloom, the Christmas of every desired birth and awaited in every form, the Christmas of the rebirth of good and hope in the world despite everything. Blessed be the universal Christmas of Life in all its forms!

Blessed is also the Christmas of Jesus of Nazareth with that tender image that I have engraved in my heart since I was a child: the manger, the grotto, the shepherds and farmers, the fields of Bethlehem, the choir of angels in the middle of the night, the star that guides the wise men of Persia. That was my first Christmas and it’s still the first for the kid that I still am. But for the septuagenarian I have inadvertently become, the Christmas of Jesus is neither more nor less than my closest and most inspiring icon of universal Christmas. And I don’t know whether to call this Christmas of Jesus Christian, because Christianity arrived 100 years later and because, after all, there is only one Christmas.

It was already celebrated by other names long before Jesus. Millennia earlier, many peoples celebrated the winter solstice, around December 21 in the northern hemisphere and around June 20 in the southern hemisphere, when the inclination of sunlight on the Earth is maximum and the night begins to be shorter and the day longer. It was and still is the feast of the sun and the earth, the feast of its fruits given in common food, the feast of life.

The Mayas, the Aymaras, the Incas and the Mapuches celebrated and still celebrate the return or the new dawn. And so are the Maori of New Zealand, the Bulldogs of Mali and the Sami of Lapland. And so in Japan, China, India and Persia. And the Slavic peoples, like Russia and Ukraine, just like the Celts. The Germans and Scandinavians evoked the birth of Frey, god of the sun, rain and fertility, representing the divinity with an evergreen tree. In Rome they celebrated the “Nativity of the Invincible Sun” on 21 December, and Mithraic worshipers throughout the Roman Empire commemorated Mithras’ birth in a cave on 25 December.

As Christianity spread and established itself after Constantine, what happened in all times, cultures and religions happened: the new religion assimilated the old holiday and gave it a new name, reason and meaning. Thus the feast of light and of nature that is reborn has become the feast of the birth of Jesus, new light – the same light – which illuminates and consoles life. Nothing is lost, everything is transformed. They change calendars and names, rites and specific meanings, but the same Sun returns to the same Earth. The life-giving mystery of light is once again revealed, made present.

No one knows anything about the birth of Jesus except that he was the son of Mary and Joseph (or perhaps of an unknown father) and that he was born in Nazareth into a large and poor family. He was free and brother, compassionate and healer. For this his followers recognized him as the Christ or Messiah, the one they were waiting for and who was to announce the good news to the poor, heal the sick, free the prisoners, and over time the poets created beautiful symbolic stories that narrate his birth. There were also those who confessed him as the divine Word or Logos creator of the world. “The Word became flesh”, says the Gospel of John. In the fourth century the current Creed was drawn up, which confesses Jesus as the only Son of God, “of the same nature as the Father”, who “became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary”. And so they began to ritually celebrate the birth of Jesus.

I still do, but I can’t believe the Creed literally. I cannot reasonably think of an Almighty, First and Out of this World Creator God who, in the 13 billion years of this expanding universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies harboring probably innumerable planets with life, in this universe which is perhaps no other that one among other universes without number, was fully incarnated only once, and he did it right on planet Earth, in this passing species that is Homo Sapiens, 2000 years ago, in a Jewish man named Jesus, who would be was conceived without male gametes and would come to Earth to atone for our sins.

I can no longer believe the dogma of the incarnation understood literally, but I celebrate the Christmas of Jesus. Every day during these holidays, I will gaze and bow tenderly before our home Bethlehem. Beth-lehem, house of bread. Captivating Bethlehem in a world full of longings and sorrows. I will join the small community of Aizarna and sing with them from my heart and mouth the words of the Christian Creed: “He became incarnate of the Virgin Mary”, without submitting to the traditional and outdated meaning of the words. I will celebrate the Christian Christmas of Jesus, symbol of the Christmas of the heart without borders, the Christmas of humanity, the Christmas of the planet, the Christmas of the infinite Cosmos, made of fire or light, of animated matter, the mysterious womb from which universes are born , suns, planets, azaleas, robins and lambs, and this admirable and so contradictory Homo Sapiens that perhaps he will disappear before reaching the balance he seeks: happy goodness.

There will be those who will say that this Christmas is not Christian. I don’t know what they call Christianity. As for me, I think that being a Christian today does not require professing incomprehensible doctrines literally, in hierarchical institutions that today make no sense, and that Christianity will disappear, it is already disappearing. I think that being a Christian basically consists in creating and taking care of life, so wonderful and fragile, a fraternal and joyful life, following the inspiration of Jesus, bless him.