Still trending this Christmas – caged Baby Jesus. You’ll remember last Christmas’ cartoon by Mexican-American cartoonist Lalo Alcarez of a wide-eyed Baby Jesus in swaddling clothes further constrained by a cage secured by a lock with an American flag on it. The theme, echoing children and families confined indefinitely at the southern border by the Trump Administration, continues with coast-to-coast Nativity displays of Jesus, Mary and Joseph either in separate cages or Baby Jesus set off alone.
Predictably, some have found these displays, which include one this year at California’s Claremont United Methodist Church, to be powerful. Others scoff, noting that the Holy Family was not made up of undocumented immigrants or refugees (though they would later flee King Herod’s wrathful jealousy by temporarily relocating to Egypt).
Christmas is one of those holidays that pushes everyone’s buttons. Should we say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”? Has it gotten not only too secular but too commercial? Why even celebrate the birth of a man who some believe to be only a myth?
The historical Jesus most certainly lived, preached and died in the early years of the first century. That he was divine, too, is a question of faith. Whether or not you believe this does not preclude you from relishing the secular tradition of Christmas, nor does that tradition detract from the Christian feast, which begins on Christmas and lasts for 12 days until the feast of the Epiphany, when the Magi, guided by a star, found the babe in a manger stall, because there was no room for him at an inn.
And that is the point of caged Baby Jesus – not that he was undocumented or a refugee necessarily but that he and his family were marginalized – just as the immigrants at the border have been.
Can America admit everyone? Probably not. But we can have compassion. We can treat people as human beings. We can listen to their stories.
That is the true meaning of the Christmas narrative, whether you believe in it as an article of religious faith or not.
So Merry Christmas — in whatever way you keep the day.